Lately I’ve been trying different Belgian beers I haven’t tried before, and honestly, I wasn’t much impressed with the last few bottles. But Malheur (not to be confused with Melchior, which is also Belgian beer) set me back on the right track. It has some head, but it goes away quickly, leaving you with not very gassy ale that tastes like canned peaches to me, mostly. A lucky find, and now I hope to try Malheur 12.
Not the movie I expected. It is confusing at first, with sudden time jumps that are hard to follow, and the storytelling feels rushed, despite the movie is some 2:30 hours long. But it becomes more interesting as you begin to notice discrepancies between depictions of same events from different character perspective.
The movie dedicates a lot of attention to the role of woman in the 14th century. A woman cannot appeal to court without her husband’s approval. Rape is not offence against the woman, but agains her husband. And, of course, sentence for a woman who wrongly accuses someone of rape is to be burned at a stake.
The duel is indeed impressive. It’s chaotic and brutal. A horse can run into a wall or trample a squire or hit you with its hoove. And they use “halfsword” grip a lot, because they are so close. All this from almost static camera.
And it surprised me that they didn’t chew on the implications of mother’s role in the events at all, leaving it all to be deduced.
Finished painting last skaven out of 20 today. All that’s left now is to paint and clean the bases.
I ended up with more than 40 paints. Some of them are a disappointment, especially the Volupus Pink I’ve been hearing so much about. It’s not pink, it’s purple. And I needed pink for the tails, which was the most time-consuming part.
I didn’t have any reason to rush this. A single rat takes between one to two evenings to paint. I also was taking breaks to wait for new brushes and paints to arrive to experiment. And I switched from layer to contrast paints half the way through, which I’m quite happy with.
I stopped reading gaming news altogether shortly after war in Ukraine broke out, and haven’t really read them since.
So the remaster of Oblivion came as a surprise to me. And it seems I’m not the only one, news sites or no.
I played Oblivion a lot in the day, “in the day being” July 2007, and “a lot” being for probably two weeks. But I never finished it, for the game ending up being too repetitive with the enemy scaling with you making the whole leveling up process quite pointless. Not sure if I’d give it a go now, but some YouTubers are sure gushing about it a lot.
Huyghe Brewery is best known for its amazing Delirium line of beers, or “the beer with the pink elephant”, but it’s not the only beer it produces.
One example is Averbode I reviewed last year, and another, and maybe better known, is the La Guillotine.
It’s an golden ale, a style that I like very much.
Delirium, in comparison, has the same ABV, 8.5%, but is a pale ale. Pale ales should be generally more bitter than golden ales.
But here’s a catch: Delirium is considered sweet for pale ale, while La Guillotine is considered bitter for golden ales, so all in all, Delirium is sweeter than La Guillotine. Go figure.
In any case, I would pick Delirium over La Guillotine.
Completed Link between Worlds.
One trope I always forget in Zelda games is that if you sprint into an obstacle, you may knock off whatever is on top of it. This works for upgrade snails that sit on top of trees, for example. Not sure if this mechanic was implemented anywhere besides Minish Cap and this game. But at least here it’s not required to complete the main plot.
Lorule Castle makes you repeat four bosses. But it’s not a rush, the bosses are in different sections of the castle, and you can save in between.
Then you have to fight Yuga, the huge swine. In the first phase you just hit him in the face. In the second you have to play pinball, reflecting the projectile multiple times. Then he turns into a mural, and you get a bow that can shoot murals. Overall, it’s a nice fight, although I must confess I bruteforced it by stocking on healing potions.
Rovio, the rabbit guy that was selling you stuff, turns out to be Link from the other world. He convinces Hilda to stop trying to steal the Triforce, and instead, Zelda and Link use their wish to grant Lorule their own Triforce.
Interesting final bit, as far as Zelda stories go, that is, is that Link returns the Master sword into the stone. Presumably for the next Link to get it out again. The vicious cycle continues, so to say.
Speaking of the sword, I never found the last piece of ore for the final upgrade. Didn’t remember which dungeon I had to repeat to get it.
I love Belgian beers and love Trappist ales, so I grabbed this Achel Tripel to try. Tastewise, it didn’t impress me much. I was drinking it alongside Grimbergen, and the later has more flavour with less ABV. It does provide tons of sleepiness, though. I was still feeling it’s effect after 3 hours.
Maybe I’d enjoy it more if I’d cool it properly. This one I had room temperature, because it was a last minute decision. But I probably wouldn’t bother buying it again, honestly.
Some good actors (Florence Pugh, the guy from Dungeons&Dragons, Stannis Baratheon) and surprising attention to historic accuracy (William Wallace wasn’t a pict, and they weren’t wearing only browns in Medieval times). But I can’t help but feel that it should have been a miniseries, due to the density of events. Robert’s loses most of his army, his wife is taken hostage and two of his brothers killed in span of 20 minutes. And those two brothers are half the way across Scotland!
The most ridiculous scene, when Robert stabs his competitor in the church is historically accurate.
Honestly surprised they managed to pull the final battle. Very impressed.
Not sure what’s worse: a “helicopter boss” or not having a boss at all.
Usually, the most devastating LMG in Far Cry is MG42. Not this time, this time we get a minigun, if handicrafted. And a sniper rifle that shoots explosive darts. I didn’t say there are no cool weapons in this game.
Second region is big on LGBT agenda. How do you know Paolo is trans? Don’t worry, “he” will tell you. As will “his” doctor, that is very proud of top surgery he performed. And there’s also two lesbians to save. You need to save them not because they are opposing the regime, but because they are lesbians. That’s what I call “subtle writing”.
This is my first Madeira cask whiskey. It has surpring level of peatiness to it, which I didn’t expect. At 52%, it is sweet, but not as sweet as some sherried whiskies, and it leaves a nice warmth in your throat.
There are a few design choices I find plainly strange. Right after the tutorial island you are given what is basically a personal helicopter. Nobody tells you that you have it, but it’s there on the top of the bunker if you know about it. But you can’t fly it anywhere, because of anti-air turrets. So you spend hours destroying those. It would have been easier just not to give you early access to helicopters. After all, it’s not like in Cuba helicopters are just sitting in every backyard. But I guess they just wanted to prolong the game, and towers weren’t an option anymore.
The second issue is the crossbow, or hand balista that I already mentioned, I think. Again, you are given this weapon at the very start. At just look at its stats:
This is basically a railgun. It reloads slowly, but it can take any enemy, even minibosses, with a single headshot. Yes, you get limited ammunition for it. But you have almost zero motivation to discover other weapons when you have this in your arsenal. Oh, and did I mention it’s almost silent as well?
Speaking of progress, I’ve barely completed one region out of 3, and I’m already level 8 out of 10. Not sure if there’s much to look forward to.
Aeropress Go Plus is almost everything I wanted from Aeropress Go. It is slightly bigger. The plastic is clear and feels more robust. Actually, the entire thing is more robust. The cup is metal and thermal, and has a storage compartment at the bottom for extra paper filters. And it all fits very nicely.
The only downside for me is that you can’t fit the lid with the pressurized filter cap on. Aeropress Go had a rubber lid, so you could still stretch it, but Go Plus has a plastic lid. Still, I prefer this version much more, and I didn’t plan to use the lid anyway.
I purchased a can of this beer simply for the gorgeous art.
First thing that comes to mind it is how smooth that beer is. Guinness level of smoothness, but at 7% ABV. They use both coffee beans and cacao nibs, and both are blended very well.
And believe it or not, it does put you in that lightly-sleepy state for a very long time, I was still feeling it after 3-4 hours, which is uncommon for such a low ABV.
Like many other sandboxes, Far Cry 6 can’t decide what it wants to be. Either you can singlehandedly hijack a Soviet tank, jump from 50m only to open a parachute and a wingsuit, and if you venture into a zone too early, enemies there would withstand multiple headshots from a sniper rifle. Also, you have a backpack that shoots homing rockets that are able to blow both tanks and helicopters.
But then the story is this family feuds and serious sacrifices. At least they still have the ability to kill off characters.
Also, there is counter narrative, it wouldn’t be Far Cry without it. Castillo mentions that 80% of his soldiers come from farmer families, not a fact for cartoonish tyrant. And Alejandro tells her sister that she is a guerilla just because she thinks it’s all a game.
My knife philosophy, that has developed over the years, is that I have a pair of chef’s knives, 6″ and 8″, and a pair of santoku knives, also 6″ and 8″, and I slowly upgrade them year by year. I started with Arcos and OXO, and now I’m creeping to Japanese brands.
This year came the time of 8″ to be upgraded. Since I was traveling to the US, I decided to fulfil my 2 years long dream and get a Shun Kai knife in the form of 8″ Premier Chef knive.
European knives usually come at 58 Rockwell hardness. This claims to be 61. But here’s a hard truth: no matter how hard your steel is, you still need to sharpen in. Horl for the win.
Here’s an example on even harder Miyabi knives, which are on my list as well:
Also, I’ll admit to what everyone else was saying. Those hammer dimples don’t have any effect on food adhesion to the blade. They just look nice.
Transformers are quite a ridiculous universe. I mean, there are female transformers, you have transformers going to a gym, and riding to work in trains.
But in this nonsensical universe, they created an excellent origin story, where Optimus is the adventurous one, while Megatron is the more level headed. Both of them can’t transform. This is actually a thing in the Transformers universe, you need a Cog to transform, and some original episodes were even dedicated to this cog being stolen.
Also, it’s Optimus who gives Megatron his emblematic sticker.
And, because those are all robots, there is a place for some ultra violence, like Megatron tearing the previous tyrant in half.
What this movie manages to capture is the aesthethics of the early ninethies. With no blur:
Maybe not all is lost yet.
I think it’s a bit of a shame that the game is heavily skewed towards gathering. You are supposed to loose all your equipment from time tobtime, and then buy it again, and that’s what powers game economy.
The bosses are fun at first, feel fair enough if you learn their patterns, but the reward can be 2K, while upgrading your weapon costs 350K, and 2K doesn’t even cover the repair costs for your gear. Probably because of how unprofitable it is, finding a party for dungeons is also almost impossible, unless it’s an end game raid.
Speaking of upgrading, I didn’t understand why it’s needed at first, until my growth started to plato around T6 gear (out of 8). So my character can’t use a T7 sword, but he can upgrade T6 sword he can use 4 times, basically creating T10 sword in the process. Upgrading is expensive, but it is needed as leveling up gets very time consuming.
Watching Batman after Penguin is quite interesting, as I have more context on who Maronis and Falcones are.
I never liked Nolan’s trilogy, especially Dark Knight, so for me going back to investigative roots of Batman works great.
Seems like the art of dialog writing also returns to us:
” – I have a thing about strays” while Catwoman speaks with Batman is a good one.
The most distinguishable feature is the top-down shots.
Not groundbreaking or anything, but distinguishable. That, and that cats. The cats are gorgeous.
Unlocked Plagueburst Crawler from it’s Incursion event.
Unlocked Roswitha from requisitions.
Unlocked Sword Brother Godswyl from leveling up Orks and grinding his battle. Important as he’s needed for Octarius Mirror.
By this point I started to get tired of the game, as the progress is very slow and not very rewarding.
Unlocked Abraxas from grinding his campaign battle. This is important, as now I have Saim Hann Mirror campaign unlocked.
Unlocked Thaddeus Noble, also from grinding, and also important, as it unlocks Fall of Cadia Mirror. Now, I have just one more Mirror campaign to unlock, which is Octarius Mirror.
Unlocked Brother Burchard by grinding. Just one more Black Templar character to grind through to unlock the final Mirror Campaign.
Samurai Shodown Sen (aka Edge of Destiny) is one of those weird 3D instalments of Samurai Shodown series that happened after SNK’s implosion. Officialy, it was ever released only in the arcades (Taito Type X) and on Xbox 360, making it one of the few games that still warrant having Xbox 360.
But recently I discovered that a PC version exists. At first I thought this is some kind of a scam. Then I thought that it’s some kind of wrapper around Xenia. Neither seem to be true. Some comments say that this might be a leaked prototype, put together by fans. Which may explain why it uses dgVoodoo to run.
After I managed to play it once, though, the game stopped booting, giving an error in what I suspect to be Japanese. And no matter how many times I tried to delete it and unpack it again (there’s no installation process), they game just wouldn’t start.
Speaking of Xenia, though, I discovered that it emulates the game perfectly well. And that’s the opportunity to finally discuss what it is. Because in essence, it’s not a Samurai Shodown game. It’s Soul Calibur with characters from Samurai Shodown. Instead of weak/medium/strong slashes, there are vertical and horizontal slashes. There’s a grab (throw) with a single button. There are very few special moves, but many combos. And the inputs are mostly chains of attacks, not QCF/QCB common to SNK games.
The characters are modelled and animated well (looking at you, Arika), no complains there. Visually, it’s an Xbox 360 game. I’m not sure what specifically prompted that style on Xbox, but it’s very dark, gray/brown in tone.
