Arbiter’s story is bad. First, he never mentioned in the original Halo, so when he’s punished for Halo blowing up you don’t care. And then he’s immediately reinstated as an alien covert agent, so there is zero consequences.
As a character, I guess they just wanted players to be able to try out Covenant. The only difference is that he has invisibility, that is quite useless. But the effect is visually nice for its time.
I completely forgot that one of the three hierarchs is a boss fight, and Master Chief can mount his flying throne and beat him to death.
For some reason, they decided that having another Library level is a good idea. And surprisingly, they managed to make it even more boring than the original.
Month: September 2026
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Halo 2
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IKEA Fjallroding
One reason I’m so interested in those knives is that they use 10Cr15MoVCo steel (10Cr15CoMoV to be more correct). Which is Chinese variant of a Japanese VG-10, which in itself a very good steel.
A 15cm Shun Classic utility knife with VG-10 steel costs aroung 130GBP. A 14cm IKEA Fjallroding utility knife costs 30GBP. -
OutIn Claro and Timemore Black Mirror Mini
Seven years ago, when I was just getting into coffee, there were just a few coffee scale models, and those were expensive. I literally hunted for a Brewista scales all around Amsterdam. Nowadays, they’re half the price, and there are plenty of models to pick from.
Although I replaced my Brewista with Acaia Pearl some 3 years ago, I still use it in my travels. But the plastic started falling apart, so I decided to replace it with something.
My first choice was Timemore Black Mirror Mini, which is confusing, because it’s slightly smaller than Nano. But it didn’t come with a travel case, and my main purpose was to have it for travel.
OutIn Claro looks and performs so much similar to Timemore Mini that I’m pretty sure they have the same components inside. Same accuracy, same response times, even the same size. Only difference is the shape: Claro is rount, Timemore Mini is square, and the fact that Claro comes with a case. -
Halo 2
I remember disliking Halo 2 back in the day. Back coming to it now, right after Halo 1, can see some major improvements.
First, they’ve got rid of health system. Now there are only shields, so you don’t have medkits to manage. Also, the shields recharge faster, and they make sure to let you know that.
The weapons make more sense as well. SMG acts like a former assault rifle, spraying bullets, while the new battle rifle fires in bursts and has a scope. Shotgun is still there, but slightly weaker, it seems, as it was a superweapon in Halo 1.
There are also stationary machine guns that you can man. In this level there are clear Iraq influences, which happened in 2003. Halo 2 was released a year later, in 2004.
The Scorpion tank went from feeble to invincible, you can crush whole Covenant armies with it. It fires four times as fast, and the infantry also has homing rockets, if it wasn’t enough.
Covenant have their Beam gun, basically an energy sniper rifle. Considering how powerful the sniper was in the original Halo, that’s a welcome addition.
One episode that is still genuinely impressive is boarding of the Covenant walker, as it walks under the bridge. And that’s without any scripts.
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Call of Duty 3
Completed Call of Duty 3. I shouldn’t have bothered.
My main problem with the game is the shooting. It’s very hard to figure out if you’re hitting anyone, and generally weapons are not fun at all.
There’s a mission where you play Polish soldiers riding a Sherman Firefly tank, and of course blowing a King Tiger. But other than than, it’s a slog. I was relieved to get Gewehr 43, as I was getting tired of MP40 all the time.
Since it’s a 2006 game, of course there are a lot of QTEs. You get to grapple a German at least 4 times, and I lost count how many explosives you need to plant. For some reason, the mortar is also a minigame, you rotate it by spinning the left thumbstick, and alter the arc by rotating the right thumbstick.
Curious that they implement mount mechanic, but only for MG34, although Bren also has a bipod. -
Moby Dick, Herman Mieville
After my success with Blood Meridian, I decided I’ll give Moby Dick a go, which is cited as an influence.
It is one thing when you are forced to read a book at school, although I never was forced to read this particular book, with a time limit. It’s another when you are an accomplished man, and decide to read it at your own leisure, or to listen to it, in any case.
I was wondering how a book about a whaling expedition would be 24 hours long. An hour in, and Ishmael hasn’t even got to bed. I’m not sure if the book intended to be a puzzle, with all the talk of Lazarus and what not, or if the author just wanted to pad it.
Shortly after captain Ahab is introduced, and it’s 20% of the book, there’s a 30 minute long venture into the classification of whales, which isn’t scientific by any means, as it explains that the sperm whale is the largest of all the whales, and that it’s a fish. -
Pet Sematary (1989)
Despite being not of the highest opinion of the original novel and also pessimistic about the prospect of putting it into film, there are actually positives to the firsts adaptation.
First, they portray the cementary and the deadfall very convincingly. Second, it was hard for me to imagine what kind of a road where heavy trucks pass that would also be easily accessible for kids to run into.
Norma is completely removed. Church now scratches Louis almost immediately, then comically throws a dead rat into his bathtub. Missy, kids nanny, who was mostly a too happy non entity in the book, here is a depressed lonely woman, who hangs herself at Creed’s basement when she discovers she has cancer.
I didn’t expect to see King himself playing the preacher 😅
They combined kite episode and Gage’s death into one. This works much better than in the book.
Also, in the movie Jud doesn’t run away after encountering Timmy, they are the ones to set fire on his house.
I swear, Pascow (I was listening to the book, so I thought it’s Pascal all that time) is the best part of the movie. I think it’s the same dark humour American Horror Story adopted all those years later.
In the end, though, I think Pet Sematary story is unsalvageable. To make the final twist work, Rachel has to die. And in order for her to die, she has to be killed by Gage. But getting killed by a 2 years old is embarrassing. -
Pet Sematary, Stephen King
Completed Pet Sematary.
There is an interesting story about Rachel’s sister, Zelda, slowly dying from an incurable disease, hated by her family. Because that’s the truth.
Then there are musings about wether it’s better to have a dead kid or a retard.
But between those two, there isn’t much.
Being in the literally cycles for the post couple of years made me acutely aware of POV changes. And I’m the last third of the book it switches first to Rachel, then to Jude abruptly. Although Rachel still has Louis tone of voice.
One 80% of the book remaining, and Louis hasn’t even dug his son. The 3rd part starts on 90% of the book.
And the last part makes the least sense. “Timmy” says he has grudge with Jude, but Jude didn’t do anything to him in the 40s, he ran away. Also, neither Timmy nor Gage have any reason to kill either Rachel or Louis. It’s chaos for chaos.
And yeah, for an entity that can plan and influence, maybe making a killing machine out of 2 years old wasn’t the best idea after all. -
Call of Duty 3
One of the few Call of Duty entries I haven’t played, because back in 2006 I didn’t have any consoles.
The last Call of Duty where you can go prone.
Very nice of them to give you FG42 in your second mission. Although it’s funny that the scoped version and the regular don’t share ammo. Most of the time, you’ll be with MP40, though, as it has infinite ammo supply.
One interesting episode is where you ride a tank. But you don’t pilot it, because you’re an infantryman. Instead, you sit on the armor and spot targets with your binoculars. A distinction later games completely forgot.
After two missions at St Lo and St Germains with US Infantry, we switch to British SAS for a surprisingly good jeep mission, to help French resistance. Then back to Americans to disarm bombs on a bridge.
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Halo Anniversary
Completed Halo Anniversary.
One thing they didn’t fix, though, are zombies with rocket launchers. I don’t remember those in the Library at all. They still one-hit kill you. And are very difficult to identify from afar.
Other than that, as I suspected, the final race in the jeep is much simpler, because it has more weight to it.
So if anyone would decide to replay the original Halo, I’d recommend Anniversary over the Xbox original every time.
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Skies of Arcadia
I tried playing it once, and for some reason I remembered it being very difficult, as the first boss wiped me out. Either I didn’t farm at all back then, or I didn’t understand what the healing items and spells are called. Because they are called “sacra”. Of course every game has to invent its own spell nomenclature.
It’s an early fully 3D RPG, which is great, as most PSX era JRPGs were either 2D or using 3D models on pre rendered background. What isn’t great is that Dreamcast has only one analog stick, so you can’t rotate the camera. And since the game uses random encounters, moving around is not always desired.
The setting is why people like this obviously very teen game, which can be summarised by two words: flying pirates.
One of many mechanics the game doesn’t explain is switching the element of the weapon. You can do it at any moment, and there is “red” and “green”, but which colour is effective against which enemy is unclear to me. -
Sony Trinitron
Spent an evening trying to connect CRT to a modern PC, using HDMI to VGA and VGA to SCART. At first, I thought it would be completely impossible. CRT was displaying an image, but it was repeated three times horizontally, and with wrong colors. Colors got fixed by disabling scaling in nVidia settings. Getting a single image of right proportions took a lot of trial and error. But with CRU and a lot of tinkering, I did manage to get it close enough, albeit the image is slightly overscanned, maybe because the TV was calibrated for PS2 before. Still, it’s amazing it works at all. The resolution I ended up with is a weird 576p, but hey, as long as it works.
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Halo Anniversary
Halo remake for Xbox 360 is interesting, because it’s 10 years separated from the original, and 15 years separated from now. So it’s obviously an improvement, with more detailed textures, soft shadows, wide-screen support, and more effects, like the shields. But it also falls into an uncanny valley, with the characters looking more human and less so, like their lips are already moving, but not yet in sync with what they are saying kind of thing.
One massive improvement is Warthog. It has much more mass, so easier to control, and the gunner is also far more accurate. If in the original it was the perfect way to get yourself killed in Reunion Tour (best mission in the entire campaign), now it makes the mission much easier. Scorpion tank was also improved. Now it is actually formidable.
They’ve added terminals that play cutscenes from perspective of Guilty Spark, the bot that was left to watch Halo. Which is interesting, but also doesn’t make much sense, as he’s introduced only half way through the game.
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Dreamcast on CRT
Tried a proper SCART cable for Dreamcast, from the same seller I’ve got my Xbox cable. The picture is colored now, which is good. But the TV doesn’t switch to SCART input like it does with Xbox. Not sure if the cable isn’t wired correctly or it’s the Dreamcast.
Played Skies of Arcadia until the Pirate Island, but on the later. I think it’s the fact that both the console and the game are PAL, but the flickering is quite noticeable. Talking about how CRTs are superior to OLEDs 😅
One weird thing is that Street Fighter 3rd Strike was playing sound, but no picture. Went through multiple PAL and NTSC versions, until I found only the GDI version works for some reason.
Not that I plan to play Street Fighter 3 on Dreamcast, as I don’t have a fighting stick for it, and I really don’t like the gamepad. It’s just Street Fighter 3 is like Diablo 3 to me. I know exactly how it looks and plays, so I install it on every console I own. -
Tacticus
Unlocked couple more characters. Most of the shards came still from Anniversary Event.
Unlocked Patermine, last shards were from Guild War. That’s the most expensive Genestealer, and the last I needed.
Unlocked Kharn, another powerful Legendary. Last shards from Guild War. One of the most damaging characters in the game. Also, he’s a berserker, so if there’s no enemy character nearby, he will attack and most likely kill one of yours.
Cyrus, again most shards from anniversary, because I had to spend them on someone, and the last few from a random code gift, out of all things. Not useful.
Aunshi. Once he was mandatory, as the ability to use Active skill twice is very powerful. Now I think the meta has moved on, but hey, still not bad.
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Halo Combat Evolved
Completed Halo.
I remembered that Library episode was the worst one, with waves of Flood enemies. But it’s actually not that bad, although I did end up running past some of the encounters. The worst part comes later, when you need to backtrack to disable the generators, and the game throws at you zombies with rocket launchers. Those kill you in one shot, and one of them is placed just around the corner, just waiting to blow you away.
So Halo system was created as a way to combat parasytic Flood, by wiping out all lifeforms. But the only place where Flood had remained was… On Halo?
Not sure who thought it’s a good idea to have you throw grenades into ventilation shafts under fire to detonate the reactor. But don’t fret about running out of grenades: you can pick them from infinite zombie enemies 🤡
There was an anecdote that Halo was supposed to be an RTS, just like Bungie’s previous project, Myth. But then they tried to drive a Warthog, and decided it was so much fun they need to make a FPS out of that. Those people need to be put in an asylum. The final sequence in warthog isn’t that difficult, I made it on my 3rd try. But it certainly wasn’t “fun”, at all.
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Alien Breed 3D
I’ve heard about Alien Breed games, which were topdown shooters. But I didn’t know they had a FPS spinoff, and at first I thought it was just some demo or prototype. I wish it was, because it does look like a joke.
It’s a Doom clone, which means they have sector elevations, like stairs. It also stole Doom door sounds and shotgun sounds, although shotgun is animated like a pump action, despite being double barrelled. And they stole button bitmaps too. And of course you need to collect colored keys to open doors.
The real problem, though, is that half of the screen is taken by UI, and the game window is so tiny and pixelated it’s almost impossible to understand what’s going on.
Then there’s the level design. I replayed Doom and Doom 2 not long ago, and mostly, they are fine. Never did they make me press four buttons in a row in the same room to proceed.
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Xbox 360
It’s quite amazing that a year later, with BadUpdate 1.3 and BadAvatar it’s possible to boot directly into Aurora. Unmodded Xbox 360 is as good as a modded one now. And the best thing, I don’t need an USB drive to stick out of my console anymore.
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Pohjala Barrique Noire Imperial Baltic porter
I’ve complained a lot about most of my favourite beer not being available in the UK anymore. There is one silver lining to it, though, and it’s Estonian Pohjala barrel aged imperial porters, that are still easy to get.
Barrique Noire is a masterpiece. Smell of prunes, and taste of cherries and chocolate, all thanks to reme the cassis barrels. I can’t say I taste blackcurrants themselves, but then I don’t taste them in the liquor either. -
Sony Trinitron
I bought a RGB SCART from eBay for my Xbox. Not sure why Xbox specifically, maybe because I had plans to play Halo anyway?
It turned out to be actually good, despite not being an expensive. Now TV actually turns on the correct input when console is connected, and the colours are good too.
The image is… interesting. One thing I noticed is that in Halo, in the bog there are fireflies, and those leave trails on CRT, something that doesn’t happed on LEDs.
Tried Dead or Alive 3 on it. There’s certainly something to that motion blur.