Goose Island is something I remember from Boston as common piss beer, excuse me, I mean pale ale.
But during my last visit to California when I failed yet again to procur Russian River, I did get a bottle of this 14.7% goodness
It’s amazing. Although I don’t remember if I ever had an Imperial Stout or a barley wine that wasn’t.
Very dark, with no head whatsoever, smooth, and tastes like Madeira wine, and honey, and coffee.
I’d buy it again for sure, if I ever find it.
Completed Ace Combat 1 in two sittings.
After success with Ace Combat 4, I decided to check the very first installment in the series, originally called Air Combat . It is still surprisingly playable. The planes are recognizable, and fly well enough. Even the control scheme stayed the same. And you also get to buy new planes between missions.
The differences are that 3rd person view in the first game is mostly useless, while on PS2 I would use it most of the time. This is because it has no information about your speed, for example. To the point I thought my gamepad was misbehaving, as you don’t really see your plane speeding up.
The main tradeoff is the viewing distance. You can’t see shit, basically, enemy planes appear only when they are about 2km away. So you have to navigate by radar most of the time, until you are almost on them.
One notable change I have to talk about is the color palette of the planes. I’m not sure if it’s arcade legacy, or 95 style, or just an attempt for the planes not to mix up with the surroundings, but… red, purple and white? Really?! There’s a real-world term “Flying Circus” coming to mind.
Of course I had to check if this also applies to F117 Nighthawk… and yes, it does.
Wingmen are an interesting concept. Before a mission you can decide if you want to spend a significant sum to have a friendly jet. And you also can choose which jet it will be, which is of course affects the price. You also set the strategy for them: defend you, or try to complete the mission.
Some missions are also quite ambitious. There’s a night bombing run, and a mission where you have to follow pipelines in the desert to locate enemy oil refineries.
You also get to choose which missions to do. And of course there is a ravine mission. The saddest ravine mission ever, I must say, as the hardware was nowhere near. But they tried nevertheless. Actually, there are two ravine missions, although second is more of a tunnel or a cave.
The game is rather short, with 17 missions in total, but because there are some branching paths you have to complete around 14 to beat the game. But it is ambitious. At one point you have to bomb a suspension bridge, and they animated parts of the bridge crashing down into the water.
And the final boss is this flying fortress with four engines that you have to chase, and each engine falls apart separately, and then the fortress begins to tilt and raise smoke. 10 years later, they would repeat this mission in full force, but the fact they already imagined that back in ’95 is impressive.
The only bit I didn’t appreciate is the “Bingo!” exclamation every time you land a hit. Guess this is from the arcade days.
Vault City specializes in “dessert beers”, and this one is no different. It’s delicious, although it doesn’t even taste like a beer. It is not just opaque, but kind of lumpy, with no head whatsoever. Definitely sour. Not sure about “dutch pancakes” or “chocolate”, but it does taste like a strawberry punch alright.
Even by adventure games remaster standards, this is atrocious. They used xBRZ filter, which turns the game graphic into unintelligble mess. But that’s only half ot he problem, as the filter can be disabled. The other half, is that the game itself is bad.
Major parts of the map are forest zones, which, while beautiful in a pixelart sense, are mostly pointless. Then, you have very vague goals (find the mage Calysto, find necromancer’s staff) and even more vague means to achieve them. There are 20+ items in my inventory, and I have not a clue when any of these items might be useful.
At one point, you meed a barbarian in the forest, and you’re given a whistle if you ever need his help. Then you meet a troll blocking a bridge, and that troll asks for goat stew. How do you get a goat stew? You don’t. How do you use the whistle? You don’t. You need to talk to the troll a second time, and then he will grab the whistle and use it himself, beconing his demise. It’s funny, but I came to this solution by chance, not through some logical process.
I ended up using a guide at Goblin Cave, because I thought that I might have softlocked my playthrough. I didn’t, but it is just that I tried to “give” bucket to the druid, instead of “using” bucket on a druid. Or maybe I tried to “use” it, but Simon walked to him instead, and I assumed it does nothing and didn’t try again.
In any case, I think I’m done with this game. The only positive bit is custom animations. Those are impressive, considering they are used only once, and they are genuinely funny. Like when Simon pops out of Iron Maiden, where he was hiding from the goblins, takes a sip of water, and in starts leaking from different places. Or when Rapunzel drops his braid on him, and he becomes this hat with shoes for a few moments.
Completed Ace Combat 4.
The game is short. 18 missions and about 2 hours of actual gameplay.
The problem with the game is the rather tedious mission structure. You’re often just given 15 minutes to score enough points in any way you see fit. And while the idea of picking your targets in any order is interesting, nothing is more frustrating than running out of time.
The contrast is most obvious between Mission 10, where you have to try to hit an enemy submarine dock, and Mission 11, where you escort friendly transport planes.
New planes become available as the game progresses, and you’re supposed to buy them with the money you earn from completing missions. But after you get the EF-2000 midway through the game, there’s not much point in buying anything else.
Also, maybe because of the point system, but friendly units don’t actually shoot anything, as far as I can tell.
You get some cool jets at the end: the F-22, F-15 ACTIVE, and for the final mission, the Su-47.
It’s impossible to call Thirteen a nemesis, because Mobius 1, the protagonist, is ever silent, and they meet only twice throughout the game. The first time, you just need to escape; the second time, you shoot him down.
Of course, the final mission has you flying through multiple corridors. But either because I was playing with an analog controller, or because I was prepared, or maybe simply because it’s easier than later installments, I managed it on the first try.
The hardest part was figuring out what the game wanted from you, because the two corridors you have to fly through are parallel, but the third one is perpendicular to the first two, so you have to circle the island to find the entrance.
Still, it’s a cool mission, with cruise missiles launching and lasers sweeping the sky.
Completed Slender Threads.
I’m not very good in puzzle games, so the difficulty for me is alright. Most of the puzzles are just item puzzles, although there’s one mapping a sequence and another with “alien numbers”, which I bruteforced, because two numbers are obvious, and for the other two, you have just 3 options each. Also, at a couple of episodes you get your inventory taken away, and have to do with what you find.
The story is a bit meta, but not in a way I was expecting. I thought that the protagonist will be an escapee from the asylum. Then I thought it will go towards breaking the 4th wall, and the black hand being that of the player.
But turns out, all characters are marionettes (thus, threads). And the plays they are used to are kind of Twilight Zone (familiar from Alan Wake), that’s why at one point you’re told something like “you will kill us in many different ways every evening”. And the radio you hear at the beginning is the announcement of the next show.
All in all, it’s a great adventure game. Not too difficult, with a lot of smart references (the veil and the window are straigth from Cthulhu mythos) and with a distict visual style.
Games like Slender Threads also make me think why I often enjoy modern adventure games, but not those from the Golden Age. Those tried to justify full-price tag, and so made the puzzles too difficult, so the game would feel longer. While modern adventure games often cost a fraction, and I don’t mind when I finish them in a couple of evenings.
A beer I brought from Denmark when I wasn’t sure if I’d find any better beer in Denmark.
It’s a good triple. Has a tall head initially, but it dissipated quite quickly. And the taste is smooth and honey-like. Head is light, but quite focused. Better than a lot of Belgian triples I’ve had this year, but not something I’d go looking for in Denmark again.
I’ve heard about coffee getting stale over time. And here I am, returning after 10 days of vacation, and deciding to make a couple of flat whites from the beans I had left in the hopper.
First two shots ran at 3 bar. That’s for a coffee that usually runs at 7-9 bars. Only after purging the coffee, putting the beans from the bag and pulling another shot or two the pressure recovered.
Needless to say, I didn’t feel the need to taste the result of 3-bar coffee.
I love Guy Ritchie as much as the next man. But I must admit that considering how rich his characters often are, they could have benefited from a TV series. Snatch series, I didn’t enjoy much. But Gentlemen are much better.
Main theme is “restrained aggression” common to British culture. Undercurrent of threats that is everywhere: public announcements especially. Another theme is the modern royalty, and where all the money comes from (mostly property rent, actually).
I’ve never read Dredd comics nor have I seen the Stallone movie, so have nothing to compare with.
I vaguely remember this movie wasnt appreciated much when it came out, but with the rise of The Boys, it got re-evaluation.
It is 90s level of brutal, I give it that, flayed bodies and brains scattered all around.
Also, it has a way of depicting drug use, slow mo and bright colours.
Another interesting decision is that Dredd wears the signature helmet, but Rookie doesn’t, because she relies on her psychic powers.
Storywise, this is basically Raid all over again, minus silat. A huge slum building on lockdown trapping two policemen trying to arrest a criminal, all gangs hunting for them.
It’s hard to understand from the screenshots, but it’s actually a 3D point’n’click adventure that makes itself look like 2D.
Gameplay wise, it’s pretty standard: you talk to people, you have your inventory, you can combine stuff.
Storywise, though, it is not so much horror as it is dark comedy. You do standard point’n’click stuff, like trying to prank a barber to get a pile of hair you aren’t even sure you need… And the barber ends up having a heart attack.
The complexity comes not from its puzzles, those are rather logical, I must admit, but from the sheer number of locations and characters that are available almost from the get go. Also you quickly find half a dozen items in your inventory you have a very vague idea where to use. Luckily there’s a decent hints system built in. It’s not 90s anymore.
Lochlea is a distillery that likes to experiment with their cask strength batches. Apparently, Batch 3 is a peated one.
This is Batch 2, which, without me knowing, is sherried. How lucky.
At first sip I was skeptical. But over time, it actually grew on me, and now I consider this whiskey to be good value for money. Oloroso and PX casks at 60% ABV are really brought to life.
Ace Combat is one of my all time favorite series. Enough to say that I got myself a PS2 only to play that game, because emulators, despite all their advantages, can’t deal with its analog controls properly.
But I also have to admit that Ace Combat 4, Ace Combat 5 and Zero are kind of the same game. You fly the same jets, you have just a couple of weapons, and you mostly just shoot missiles at everything.
What varries is how the story is presented. Ace Combat 4 uses anime stills. And the story is not about you, but about your adversary, called Yellow 13. He is viewed through the eyes of a boy, whom he orphaned by accident. The boy works in a pub where the occupier pilots gather. Bartender and his dauther are part of the Resistance, though, and wait for the occupation to end. Despite the dauther being secretly in love with Yellow 13. It is a nice way to tell a story. Contrast this with “in your face” storytelling of Assault Horizon.
One problem I have with the game, though, is that a lot of mission are “earn X points before time ends”. Which means that instead of engaging with mission objectives, you are just caught up in an endless foxfight. That also means you have to resupply once or even twice through the mission.
There are some signature missions, though. When I saw a ravine in Mission 7, I imediattely knew where this was going. And right on queue, and orbital cannon starts to fire at you, and the only way to dodge it is of course to navigate through the ravine.
One of my best purchases ever was Playstation 2 with an Infinity chip that allowed to play burned games. But burning is a hassle, despite the fact I still have a DVD burner and some blank DVDs.
So when I heard that now you can run games directly from a memory card I had to try it. Turns out this isn’t such a new thing. You could run games from memory card for a few years, using MX4SIO. But the newer cards combine both functions of memory card, storing saves, and DVD emulator.
I got the Bitfunx card which is readily available from AliExpress.
It boots fine into Free McBoot. But would get stuck while trying to boot into OPL MMCE, which is how you run games from the SD card.
After some trial and error, I figured out that I need to actually disabled my Infinite chip (hold Start while booting, then restart once).
Diablo Immortal added a new class, Druid. Althouth this one is a classic, both from Diablo 2 and Diablo 4. Still, it’s ironic how Diablo Immortal, salvaging everything from Diablo 3, is still head above most other ARPGs in the tactile sense. Yes, there’s same issue Diablo 3 had, most classes feel kind of the same: basic attack, AoE attack, mobility skill, “rage button”.
But turning into a werewolf and summoning tornadoes still feels great.
Only summoning wolves is a bit lackluster, as they “teleport” too much. I haven’t stopped until I reached Westmarch yet again.
As I was visiting Newcastle, we ended up in a gastropub that had Springbank 10 and 15 on the menu. Of course I had to try one of them out, and since the difference between 10 and 15 was just 5GBP, I went for 15 years old. Paid 17GBP for the priviledge.
It’s a nice whiskey, I can’t deny it. It is smooth, a bit sweet, a bit smokey, and leaves a nice warmth in the throat. It just doesn’t worth 200GBP for a bottle. For contrast, Benromach 21 costs 136GBP.
As I love both Diablo 2/3 and Torchlight 2, I decided to give Torchlight Infinite another try. And it squandered it.
One annoying mechanic is timed boss battles. You have 5 minutes to kill a boss, otherwise, you have to try again. You also have a limited number of retries: around 10, I think. This wasn’t a problem until level 38, when I faced Keegan. This one can kill a character in a couple of hits, and I was barely doing any damage. Managed to kill it after a few tries, but that was a major difficulty spike there out of nowhere.
Then I went to a guide and respected (luckily it’s free), and after that, it was much easier. But it’s not fun to play ARPG that you need a leveling guide for.
So, in the end, out of all mobile Diablo clones, only Diablo Immortal is worth any attention, despite all the hate it got when it released (and probably still gets).
It is clearly inspired by Resident Evil, but doesn’t copy it as much as I thought it would.
The item screen with heartbeat reflecting health and ID are there.
As is the raise weapon mechanic.
But that’s where the differences start, as your camera is not fixed, and neither your aim.
Flashligth and theme park setting are more Silent Hill, though, as is the screen noise filter.
I’ve been meaning to watch this movie after Queen’s Gambit, but like always, everything takes me ages.
They didn’t exactly go for physical resemblance. But Tobey Maguire unhinge game is brilliant.
So is Peter Sarsgaard as candy crushing priest.
There’s a lot of russian language in the movie. The bookstore keeper talks just russian, without subtitles. And so are russian chessplayers. Some are better, some, like Liev Schreiber playing Spassky, worse. Spassky is such a fun character, though, as he’s depicted as this superstar macho.
The Game 3 and Game 6 aren’t explained very well. So I’ll need to find a separate video on them.
And it’s interesting that they tried to attribute Spassky same obsessive behaviors, like Xraying the chair because it made strange sounds or talking to the lightbulb, because KGB is listening.
Instead of experimenting with Belgian beers, which mostly failed, I now decided to experiment with British and American beers.
This one is a solid Imperial Stout, at 13% ABV, almost black and without any head. The distinction is the extra warmth from chillies and the smoky aftertaste. Still sweet, though.
“Ghost” is in reference to “ghost chillies” used in the process. Those chillies grow in Bhutia, North India. “Bhut” in the local language means “ghost”, so the name caugth up.