Finished Dune Messiah. I wish I could say it was the worst book I’ve read in a long time, but then I’ve read “I am Pilgrim” not that long ago.
It’s still terrible, though. The worst is Alia, as Herbert says she’s that prodigy, but she’s completely unable to connect the dots. Like when she’s sent to investigate a corpse in the desert, unable to identify it, then when a fremen girl suddenly comes with a proposal to resurrect Chani she doesn’t think “that’s a tiny bit suspicious”, but instead brings the shapeshifter directly to Paul.
And it’s doubly ironic that after that “meticulous” plan to give resurrected Idaho to Paul so he would be convinced how good the technology is and tempted to give away his Empire in order to resurrect his wife (really? An Empire for a wife?) the shapeshifter doesn’t find anything more cunning than pointing a knife at Paul’s newborn.
But Paul has another never hinted at deus ex machina, with his ability to see through his newborn’s eyes. So because everyone things he’s blind, he manages to fool the shapeshifter and best him. Although actually, only Paul knew he couldn’t see, everyone else should have though he could. So Herbert bested himself.
Oh, and remember the metallic eyes Idaho has? They play no role whatsoever. None. You would think if he was recreated to show Paul how good the technology is they would pay more attention to making him less uncanny.
And then Alia declares her love to Idaho, who’s a cyborg 20 years older than her, and she had a couple of interractions with, one including him hinting that he could force himself on her. Yeah…
Suffice to say, if I ever try “Children of Dune”, it won’t be right now.
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Warcraft 3 Frozen Throne
First of the Frozen Throne campaigns is again for the Night Elves, but they have a few units unique to the campaign: Sentry, which uses Archer voice and Spirit of Vengeance model, but is able to cast Bloodlust, and owlbears, that have Stomp.
You also get to construct ships, including Frigates from Warcraft 2.
I really enjoyed the Broken Isles mission. It’s what you later came to expect, small islands which you can visit or skip in any order, in order to battle their inhabitants. Here’s a den of hydra. Here’s a murloc village. What would become World of Warcraft later on, basically.
Then comes a dungeon mission, which is the first mission I didn’t manage to complete the optional objective, collect all 10 pieces of Guldan’s orb, without a guide. They are tucked away something brutal.
One cool detail is that we are shown a few flashbacks of Guldan through the temple, and in the end we find his headless corpse. You know, because Skull of Guldan is a thing 😆
Other missions are quite simple, if usually they try to split your heroes and base, so you have to juggle two at a time. Also, Reign of Chaos campaign rarely gave you 2 heroes. Here you get 3 often. The final mission you need to play with naga army, which isn’t very fun, because they are quite basic. But the previous mission I got to do mass wyverns.
The story is surprisingly a nothingburger: Illidan gets his hands of Eye of Sargeras, which is supposed to shake Northrend or something. First Maiev tries to recapture him, brings his brother and Tyranda onboard, but then Illidan saves Tyranda and everything is forgiven. Considering the fact that we seemingly prevented him from earthquaking Northrend, I don’t see the point.
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Allagash Gatherwell Imperial Stout
I always assumed it is a local stout, because it’s widely availabile in the UK. Turns out it is brewed in Maine. It is smooth, sweet, and while not the most complex, very enjoyable. If I ever run out of Dragon Milk, it’s a valid, if inferior, option.
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Death Stranding
In the 6th chapter BB28, which by this point Sam calls “Lou” is taken away, which makes avoiding BTs even more annoying than usual. And you’ve made to run back and forth between an inconveniently located mountaineer and a doctor. I ended up just arming to the teeth and taking out the stalking “wolf”, then you don’t need to sneak past the ghosts anymore. If that wasn’t enough, you need to make the final delivery in a snowstorm, where you can barely see for 5 minutes of real time.
In the end of the episode, we’re transported to World War 2 this time. Again, we fight the Cool Guy, whose name is Clifford.
Also, turns out Sam had a wife called Lucy, and they planned to name their son Lou. It’s her in the picture, not his sister, if he even has a sister.
Also, Deadman is a Frankestein monster, literally created from cadavers. That explains the forehead scar.
The only character I like in this book is Bijaz the dwarf:
“His mouth rattles, but there’s no harm in him,” Otheym said, affection in his voice, the one good eye staring at Bijaz.
“Even a rattle can signal departure,” Bijaz said. “And so can tears. Let’s begone while there’s time to begin.”
And this is why I hate the rest of the characters:
“You’re not a despot!” she protested, tying her scarf. “Your laws are just.”
“Ahh, laws,” he said. He crossed to the window, pulled back the draperies as though he could look out. “What’s law? Control? Law filters chaos and what drips through? Serenity? Law—our highest ideal and our basest nature.
Don’t look too closely at the law. Do, and you’ll find the rationalized interpretations, the legal casuistry, the precedents of convenience. You’ll find the serenity, which is just another word for death.”
The strange twist is that while Paul learns about conspirators, a “stone burner” goes off. It’s a strange bomb, nuclear, powerful enough to burn to the planet’s core, but only blows a couple of houses. Still it burns Paul’s eyes. But wait, he isn’t blind, he can see in his mind! But maybe he’ll use it to fool his enemies? No, he immediatelly announces to everyone that he can see without eyes. So why add this in the first place?
I decided to refresh my memory on Dead or Alive 2 Hardcore, and it’s not even comparable to the Xbox version.
The thing that impressed me the most is the fact they created a whole new intro. PS2 version has none.
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Warcraft 3
Instead of following with Frozen Throne, I decided to give Classic campaign a try. As I suspected, Reforged completely broke the balance of the original. In my ways, the original is easier: Human riflemen are much more potent, for one. AI focuses on closest enemy, not on the most injured one.
I was surprised that the Culling map, where Arthas competes in killing infected townspeople, is completely different in the remake. In the original, your base is at the top, in the remake, it’s at the bottom. Not sure why the changes.
Also, as I suspected, the final mission in the Human campaign in original wasn’t anything special.
Can be easily done with mass gryphins, and Malganis is rather useless in it.
Also, we came a long way, didn’t we?
First Dune was Lawrence of Arabia fanfic with Hamlet sprinkled on top (took Brandon Sanderson to explain that familiar taste I couldn’t put my finger on).
With the positive influence gone, it just gets weird.
Aliya, Paul’s sister, is literally horny, so she decides to spare with a dummy naked. Of course she reaches level 11, while even the fencing masters are level 7. Then Paul walks in, and scolds her telling that he once reached level 10, but was scolded by his tutor for being so amazing in everything.
Later in the book, the story becomes outright petty. There’s a shapeshifter plotting against Paul, and he takes a shape of a Bedouin woman telling Paul that her father wants to share a conspiracy plot with Paul, but he must come personally accompanied by Chani, his concubine. A reminder, Paul is the Emperor of Mankind, 650 billion died in 12 years opposing him, but sure. And the “Bedouin woman” even has an argument when he refuses to bring Chani.
Categories
Warcraft 3
The Night Elf campaign is bizarre. First mission, you can construct only archers, and need to overrun a double base: orcs and humans. I only managed that by zerg-rush.
Then the second mission you need to sneak past Doom Guards, which I now understand demons from Warcraft 1. Which is easy, because it turns out night elf invisibility mode kicks in almost immediately, and even stops enemies attacks: if a demon was swinging his sword at an archer that went invisible, the archer won’t get hit.
But then you need to plow throw Undead base, with a limited and not very sizeable army. I’m not sure if on Normal you’re supposed to destroy the entire base, but on Hard I only managed to run through everything.
Best Night Elf unit are the Dryads. They are fast, ranged, magic immune, have automatic dispell and slow poison. Maybe you can’t only mass them, but you almost can. Paired with bears, they can win some battles without even micro.
Funny, I always thought Malfurion is an elk-centaur, just like Cenarius. Turns out he’s a druid riding an elk. Also, I didn’t remember Illidan is his brother. And they were both in love with Tyrande.
Arthas points Illidan to Skull of Guldan. They have this clear homoerotic tension between them, must be because Jaina left Arthas, and Illidan spent 10K years in prison.
The skull is what allows Illidan to turn into demon, kill Tichondrius, second dreadlord killed in this game, and get expelled, all in the length of two missions.
Final mission is another last stand, and it is as unfun as the Undead one. That’s the only mission I decided to complete on Normal, as on hard it gets quite ridiculous.
The idea is that you first help defend the Human camp, once it falls you retreat to the Orc camp, and finally you hold final land of defence in your own Night Elf camp. But I managed to stop them at Orcs.
A nice detail, when Medivh tells his story, there’s both recreation of events from Warcraft 1, where you actually hunted him in a dungeon, and from Warcraft 2, where it shows two headed ogres and troll axe throwers.
Categories
Warcraft 3
In survival missions, I always try to flip the script and destroy the bases that spawn enemies. In the last Undead mission, I didn’t manage that, but otherwise, it is not hard. I didn’t even realize it’s the final mission in their campaign.
Orc campaign starts pretty easy, despite them lacking early heal. The only point I was doubting myself is when facing Cenarius. He has ridiculous amount of HP, and either self-heals or has some kind of invulnerability skill.
You also get the chaos orcs in that mission, which I didn’t remember. Their warlocks are similar to Undead necromancers, but with a fireball skill, which I never used, because it required too much micro. They replace shamans, which is ironic, because shamans are great without micro. Also grunts, kodos and wolf riders all become “fel” and get chaos damage, which is good against any armor.
Then there’s the plato mission with wyverns. It isn’t hard, as in the enemy can’t beat you, but because the opponent has almost infinite gold, and you can only deploy from zeppelins, it’s also takes forever to beat him. I ended up cheesing the dwarf hero with wyverns.
In the last Orc mission, I’ve got Spirit Walkers, which I think is a bug, since those were only added in the Frozen Throne expansion.
It is quite ridiculous, because Infernals, which are one of the best units in the game, can land in the middle of your base, stunning your peons and killing half of your troops. They have heavy armor, which means they take less damage from piercing attacks, and more from magic attacks, but they are also completely immune to magic, so nevermind, they have no weaknesses.
But actually, it’s no so bad. The Tauren hero I left at the Human base, because Infernals tend to target him, and he’s a great meat shield and also buffs human knights. And the fel orcs don’t have trolls with them, so they can be cheesed with mass wyverns.
When Hellscream kills Mannoroth in the canyon, I always thought the pitlord injured him. Turns out, he died in the explosion 🤷♂️
Categories
Warcraft 3
Undead’s “Into the Realm Eternal” where you breach the Elfgate is also not fun. It’s the same problem, where the opponent is able to recover from almost any loss.
The next two missions are far easier, though, and I wonder if it is because you get crypt fiends, which are tankier, or just a bad design of the former.
What they did really great in the remake is the rebirth of Sylavanas.
I appreciate the small details: like the fact that not all paladins carry warhammers, some of them wield sword and shield. There are also unique high elf heroes you need to fight.
And of course there are the Blackrock clan orcs. Now this one I remembered. In Warcraft 1, orcs had warlocks. And Warcraft 2 they had dragons (albeit green). So when I saw orcs with warlocks and red dragons, I assumed those are their regular units. But no, turns out this was created just for the campaign. Those orcs are easy prey for mass frost wyrms.
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Dead or Alive 2 Ultimate
Turns out, Dead or Alive once pulled Virtua Fighter Remix on the Xbox: a remake of Dead or Alive 2 on Dead or Alive 3 engine. The remake also makes Hitomi, introduced in Dead or Alive 3, playable.
I can’t say I see a good reason to go back to it, but it’s a fun one.
Also, I don’t remember any other fighting offering analog control scheme: some moves, instead of taking directional input, like forward+punch, depend on how hard you press the punch button. At first I thought it doesn’t work because I’m playing with Xbox One controller through an adapter. But no, I tried the original controller and seems like analogn controls are just a stupid idea in general.
I wonder if the change of seasons on the Tengu boss stage is something that was added. Need to go back to the Dreamcast version, but I don’t remember this.
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Zichovec Tonka Stout
Another bottle that was hanging around for months, because it’s 14%, so you can’t drink it casually. Although it’s not expensive, as far as barrel ages stouts are concerned. And it’s absolutely fantastic. Drinks like a smooth vanilla liquor with coffee notes. I’m not even sure it can be called a beer at this point.
Categories
Warcraft 3
The funniest thing is that I managed to execute tower rush on the first Northrend mission.
It was all fun and games until final mission of Human campaign, Frostmourne. Maybe I was doing something wrong, but Mal’Ganis was able to counter my every strategy, recovering every time. I thought that I could do mass griffins, he went mass gargoyles. I tried mass tanks, he went mass meat wagons. I went knight, riflemen and priests, he managed to destroy me with abominations and frostwyrms. The only way I managed to beat that mission without looking for a guide is by eventually destroying both his mine and town hall with tanks, so he ran out of money. No fun, just frustration.
I forgot that Arthas killed Mal’Ganis. And Uther. But the dwarf friend isn’t killed directly, looks more like an accident during release of Frostmourne.
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Japanese Whiskey Advent Calendar
I wrote to the shop I got the wrong calendar from. At first they tried to gaslit me, saying that the only difference is the calendar sleeve, but I told them that I checked the contents on the site, and they aren’t the same. Then they offered 5% discount if I keep it, which is laughable. By that time I also received the correct calendar, and the funny thing is, it is also significantly larger. I don’t know why yet, as the contents are the same, 24x30ml bottles. But it is also 300g heavier. Either more cardboard or different bottle design.
At least I managed to get a refund for the blue calendar. And now I’ll probably will “sit” on the red calendar for another year, knowing myself.
Categories
Death Stranding
And just like that, we’re thrown into World War 1 trenches. With a few lethal weapons, finally. The standard fare: pistol, assault rifle, shotgun. We also meet Mads Mikkelsen character, whom we see in BB’s interludes. He cosplays Apocalypse Now. It’s a nice boss fight, were he summons WW1 soldiers, and you need to beat him a couple of times before you’re teleported back.
Then we meet Mama (Margaret Qualley). She had a stillborn dauther, and now she’s attached to that ghost-child.
That’s why she cannot leave the compound. She also has a twin sister, Lockne, and the child is actually her’s, Mama was a surrogate mother. She asks Sam to sever the cord, so she could travel and see her sister, but when she does, turns out Mama was dead all along, but now she finds her peace, reunited with Lockne.
Lockne’s eyes also change color: one remains yellow, one turns blue, like Mama’s.
That’s all very imaginative, if only the episode wouldn’t be so boring. At one point you have to deliver Mama all across the map, 10km of rough terrain, some 20 minutes of real time.
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Warcraft 3 Reforged
I know I completed both Warcraft 3 and the Frozen Throne, but it was more than 20 years ago. And I feel like I was playing games always in a hurry back then, so I don’t actually remember much of the story.
Generally, I like the Reforged version. The only issue I have is similar to Age of Empires 2 remake: when you zoom out, the image becomes all foggy, some kind of original engine limitation. This, and also the microstutters: the game goes from 240fps to 50fps every few seconds.
My personal issue is that the game had received updates for over 20 years, so I’m not sure what version am I playing when I’m playing the campaign. I don’t remember “Sundering Blades” upgrade, for one. And did Orc grunts always had heavy armor and thus weak to magic?
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New York Distilling Ragtime Rye Double Oak
9th bottle from the Advent Calendar.
It’s a surprise on so many levels. It doesn’t taste of rye much, and it doesn’t have the medicinal taste I often associate with oak. It is sweet, and unbelievable smooth for 56% ABV. Not to be confused with regular Ragtime Rye, which is “only” 45%. Has a long warm aftertaste. At 48GBP it’s incredible value.
The strange benefit of a jailbroken PS5 is that at least at the moment, it’s the most convenient Jailbreak. PS4 requires USB drive and Internet connection, PS4 Pro requires Blue Ray disc, and all you need to jailbreak PS5 is to launch the app. It may change, though, as I fully expect that PS4 9.00 will get a permanent jailbreak at some point.
Installing PS4 games is as easy as on PS4, by using Package Installer from etaHEN menu. PS5 games are a different story. You need to install another app, Itemzflow, and the games are copied unpacked over FTP. In the meantime, the only PS5 game I managed to launch is Street Fighter 6, and honestly, I can’t see a difference from PS4 version. Demon’s Souls doesn’t launch, and I haven’t tried Last of Us 2 yet.
So at this point, PS5 is just a glorified PS4 Pro.
I’m not sure what they were going for. There is some good old acting, with close-ups to boot. And I can see how some pieces fit in, like twins switching clothes, then trading places on a deathbed. Or how Agnes is able to predict that one of her kids will not survive, but being wrong which.
But what was the point of William’s father beating him for being a bad tailor, then William standing up to him? The father literally disappeared from that point, although they were still leaving in his house.
Or what about the bees? Do the bees predict plague somehow?
And the whole point of Agnes not being able to give birth to the twins in the forest. You’d assume that why one of them died, witch curse or something, but it is also forgotten.
When the camera is not closing up on someone crying, there are those zoomed out shots, which aren’t exactly still, but almost.
Seing The Globe and the final play was emotional. So at least it ended on a high note for me.
