Redwolf's Journal (continued)

To start off with, most of what I said before holds true. The major tech problems (slow loading and wonky mouse control) were resolved by a patch and/or disabling V-sync, and haven't plagued me since. I was directed to mention that the Caps Locks key toggles run/walk speed (strange that I didn't see that in the manual), which explains some of the issues I had in at least one spot. Spoiler free summary: A great game overall and a good follow-up/prequel to one of my favorite computer games ever, if not quite perfect at that. It blows away Invisible War. Sneaking, hacking, and talking are all fun. Combat is perfectly fine, but doesn't jump out to me as outstanding. I wish something different had been figured out for the boss fights because they're all a little jarring - though none are as bad as the first one (whether due to tuning or just the complete lack of preparation for it). The storyline is good, but falls a little short of great to me, and the endings are mil

Is it a good thing or a bad thing to call a book "more enjoyable than it probably should have been?" Magic Bites starts another urban fantasy series. Like most in the genre, it has a tough female lead, lycanthropes, vampires, magic, and has a murder mystery at the core. There are some twists to the usual setup, admittedly. Vampires are puppets run by human caster necromancers (unless they're uncontrolled and basically animals) rather than charming undead themselves. Magic and technology rule in occasional waves of one or the other - such that cars won't run while magic is high and vice versa for magic devices. So while there are some unique elements, the pattern isn't really new. The book is, perhaps, a bit more... gizzly than most and unashamedly goes into the sexual aspects of its big-bad-beasty as well as the whole maulings and murders thing. But I enjoyed the book anyway. I find myself like Kate as a main character, even though she has little enough in the

Some general impressions from the first few hours of the game with possible, but very minor, spoilers. First off, some technical dislikes: I really don't like having to use Steam. Sure, it gives a means of copy protection, but I figure there are people out there who crack such measures whatever they are. And there are benefits, such as "invisible" patches and easy access to DLC. But online connections are not quite as ubiquitous and fast as developers/publishers are assuming these days. I have local friends who don't have internet connections at home still, and not only can I not lend such games (which might be tricky with Steam accounts anyway), but they can't play their own. Right off the bat, I noticed two issues with the game. Loading times were long (but not as frequent as DX: Invisible War) - often over a minute - and the mouse sensitivity felt odd. The mouse issue is somewhat hard to quantify but it felt overly sensitive in first person view and slug

Okay, Gamestop has some pretty controversial policies from time to time, but... what the heck ? Pulling coupons out of a new release because they're for a "competing service" and then deciding to pull/recall the games until they can send them back to the publisher? Bwuh? Really? The thing I find actually funny about all this is I pre-ordered this game for PC at my local Gamestop, picked up a copy on release day in the early afternoon, and had said coupon in my box. In my personal experience, this whole big deal is a complete non-issue...

Various thoughts of late from computer games to roleplaying... Saturday night saw something akin to progress again in WoW. Just as I was despairing over what to do, the guild managed to down Shannox, scoring our first Firelands boss kill. Time could have been managed better and it took several attempts to get back to an early 8% wipe, but it's progress. Yay team! Morale boost +1. Strangely, I also picked up three new items: a very slightly better shield from Nefarian, the Avengers of Hyjal rep belt, and new legs from Shannox. I meant breaking my tier 11 2-piece bonus, but I think it's worthwhile. It's interesting to hear that patch 4.3 will be the "final" content patch for Cataclysm, including the fight with Deathwing. So far, the major patches have come slightly faster than in Wrath, but when one only contained a couple 5-man dungeons it doesn't feel like "more content faster." Hopefully, though, it means the next expansion won't come a ful

I finished Heartless last night, fourth in the Parasol Protectorate series. It maintains the same tone as the previous books - somewhat light-hearted Victorian-era urban fantasy. There's an assassination plot to solve amidst the supernatural workings of period London, where even enemies may take a moment to civilly discuss fashion. I think the story may over-estimate the protagonist's ability to get around at such an advanced stage of pregnancy (though difficulties are mentioned), but I can hardly argue from personal experience. ;) In the end, though, I think the book is mostly about relationships. The past and present of some among characters come into light with various degrees of impact. By the end, most of the immediate crises are resolved, some secrets are revealed, a second person is "officially" inducted into the so-called Parasol Protectorate, some factions are a little shaken up, and we get a fair idea of what the mysterious child of a werewolf and a preter

I have mentioned before how Blizzard has stood by their silhouette theory, giving tactical value to the look of a character and being able to judge what they are at a glance. This has been behind the look of the races (making sure no two are too similar) and armor for years. Well... it looks like that's going out the window. The great and terrible thing about online-dependent games, and MMOs in particular, is that things can change. It can be a graphical update and new quests (yay!) or a change in the way abilities work that shatter some play styles (boo.. or yay sometimes). What you buy on release day may only vaguely resemble what you have to play years later, just ask players of Star Wars Galaxies. It appears the folks at Blizzard have finally decided to opt for customization over easily-identifiable visuals, as it's just come out that a new Transmogrification option in-game will (once released) allow people to convert items to the appearance of other items of that type.

So first Bloodring and then Seraphs and now Host. Same pros and cons pretty much. Unique setting. Good characters. Some convoluted and repetitive, yet remarkably difficult to understand, explanations of some of the metaphysical stuff. I could probably do with less of the harem of guys gravitating toward Thorn - though it is refreshing in a way seeing her not tossing herself into wild sex with them all (as opposed to, say, Anita Blake). And in the wake of the first book I wondered "if a lot of things get explained better as the series goes on. The answer seems to be, for the most part, no. The "soullessness" of neo-mages is just accepted (to the point of ignoring that Thorn seems more able to call on seraphic support than pretty much anyone else), but never explained. Mage-heat is always there, but there isn't so much as a decent theory as to how or why that came about. The idea that seraphs may be aliens rather than angels is still floating around without proof

Y'know, it sounds pretty trivial to say that today I set up appointments with a dentist and a doctor. But then you factor in that the last time I think I've been to either was in 1993. Eighteen years. Half my life. Yeah, maybe it's about time...

Certainly not everything was better "back then" and the progress that comes with time does improve many things. But y'know what? There's still a good number of 80's-era cartoons that I genuinely miss. I remember the new fall season being a big deal. For at least a few years, network channels even did preview specials for their upcoming Saturday morning cartoon lineups. Sure, everything had a shameless tie-in to toy lines and plenty were not all that great, and yet some were better than they might be given credit for. And even some of the bad ones had really great intros. Robotech probably takes the cake for me. Even at the time, I was awed by the epic. And when I came to understand how it was created piecemeal out of three different anime series, that actually didn't ruin it for me. Rather, it gave me an appreciation for Carl Macek's work on it. Perfect? No. But hammered into an overall story that's actually amazingly cohesive, and that's quit

So, naturally, having said so little before, there really is more I've thought about the book. It's just that I can't get into much of it without spouting spoilers left and right. So for you view who read this and have read the book, I have more to say. Perhaps the thing I admire most about Jim Butcher's writing in the Dresden Files is his ability to evolve characters and setting. It's so comparatively easy to fall too far to either side of the spectrum and end up with "major events" that don't have major impact (which you see often in long-running, episodic TV shows where a status quo has to be maintained) or to lose the essence of what made a story good in the first place (seen in how sequels to "buddy movies" often flounder because the characters had to resolve their differences in the first movie). Butcher has, for some 13 novels now, managed to retain the essence of the characters while introducing changes pretty much every installmen

Ah, Harry Dresden. I do love the series, the characters, and the storycrafting. As the story is making it's turn to the second half, I still worry some about power creep and the change impressed upon setting and character, but... it all still works for me. This one's full of memories and repercussions from the last major book. Probably almost any comment I could make would be spoilerish. But I very much enjoyed the book and found it a very emotional ride.

Bleh. Could be worse, I suppose. I'm not in a truly bad mood from it, but the weekend was largely wasted and I didn't even sleep well the last couple nights. So it goes. No WoW raid Saturday - too many people missing. I sorta knew that in advance, at least, but it was still a little sad to only see three or four people on at the usual raid time. I had hoped there might be enough to at least run a 5-man dungeon, but alas. I decided to send myself out for ice cream and a short walk downtown. It's definitely tourist season. Guild Wars wasn't much better. Not feeling real well, I arrived at what had been the normal time before being asked to show up early to help some lower-level guildmates (who I haven't seen much of recently, so didn't expect to be there) and got the feeling I was still expected to show up earlier. Though that wasn't said, per se. We spent the not-unusual 20 minutes waiting for people to tweak specs before stepping out into the next missio

I have some trouble judging this one. There's a lot of technical improvements over the first. The graphics are sharper, the surroundings seem more detailed and lively for the most part. The storyline continues and concludes, with an ending that does wrap things up, if perhaps in a way that's bittersweet at best. The side missions feel less repetitious. Some changes are a little baffling. The double-/triple-unlock requirements for powers (some require minor achievements, lower-tier powers, or plot to reach a certain point, but almost all require XP as well) are overly complicated. Rocket abilities come really late, it feels like, and I almost didn't use the Precision ability which was so awesome in the first. I've seen reviewers say they prefer the new voice for Cole, but I actually liked the old one better - even if the "heavy smoker" sound of it was more fitting an injured Cole than a healed one. Nix and Kuo are interesting, though their places in the sto

It almost sounds like they go together, but nope - two totally unrelated books. Seraphs is the follow-up to Bloodring and... well, more of the same, predictably. The story picks up pretty immediately after the first delving into the domain of Darkness. I still like the characters. The whole mage-heat thing isn't really explained any better, but at least it's less pervasive this time around. The theory that the seraphs are not quite what people think is pushed a little bit more prominently, but remains unverified (perhaps even unverifiable). I still feel the human reaction to neo-mages is a bit over the top, especially when it comes to a head in this volume after our heroine has been officially licensed - fear is one thing, but why would a bunch of religious zealots go against the obvious will of what they take to be divine powers? I don't think any of my lingering questions have been answered yet, but I still like the story enough to order the end of the trilogy. Th

Well, it's nice to see Livejournal back up and fairly responsive. I don't want to personally deal with any more social networking/blogging sites. It's August already? Aiiyaah! I still can't bring myself to pre-order SW:TOR. I fully expect to play it at some point, so that seems a little odd to me. Diablo 3 only playable online? Bummer, but unsurprising. The game having an auction house option to use real money? Unsettling, but unsurprising. Both reveals are things that more games are moving toward and have been for a while, so I can hardly be shocked. Hmm. I missed the new Thundercats premiere. Shame on me, or something. Have to track down the means to see that. Edit: Okay, seen it now. Pretty good, and definitely going for the longer story arcs. I mostly like the new take on characters and setting. Interesting trivia point: I thought I recognized King Claudus' voice and, after looking it up, it's the same person who did Lion-O in the original series.