After we finished with Dirk Gently we decided we wanted something humorous so we went for Disenchantment. Same creator as Simpsons, but instead of just a bunch of stand-alone episodes this series actually has a story.
The first season is divided into two parts. The first part is a coming of age story, while the second story is a classic fantasy story arc of magic and villains. The second arc bleeds seamlessly into the first and the first arc is peppered with references of what's to come.
Elfo is a walking meme and Luci is the best part of the show. Gotta love Luci.
I finally got around to finish this game! I started it when it came out and had just finished the second episode when the whole mess with Telltale happened. For a while there it was completely unknown whether we'd get the last two episodes of Clemmy-Clem-Clem, but then Skybound stepped in like heroes and finished the game.
This game was so incredible. Little Clementine has grown so much since the first Walking Dead game and I really enjoyed the story of trying to parent AJ right while also dealing with teenage crap like romance and jealousy, while also dealing with the apocalypse. Loved it!
The last two episodes were a lot more actiony than I'm used to with Telltale (probably because Skybound did them, duh) with the added effect that there were scenes that were so effing hard for me because I can't frickin aim with a controller. I'll definitely replay this game on PC. Not just to make the experience smoother for me, but also because there are some choices I made on PS4 that I'll be very interested to know the result of the opposite choice for. And that's where PC comes in. I'm going to assume that aiming and shooting and faster reactions will come a lot more natural on PC.
K+m ftw. Only reason I play it first on PS4 is because Toni likes to watch :3
But yes, this was a worthy end to Clementine's story and I'm so happy with how it all turned out. Obviously I did make a lot of right decisions :)
Every single episode ended with a wtf wtf wtf reaction. So definitely a thumbs up from us!
The hyyyyyype! The hype was huge for this! Return to Skyrim! Vampire based story! I was in love from the moment it was announced!
I preordered the physical Collector's Edition in March. Then corona happened and it was delayed. I received my copy on May 27th, the day after release. Two days later I had finished the story and was running around doing side stuff, like finding collectables and treasure hunting.
The CE was dope. I missed getting a book like I got from the other CE, but I really really like the coins so that almost made up for it. There are four coins and they each represent a chapter. The first coin has Vivec on one side and the hand for Morrowind on the back, the second coin has Ayrenn on one side and the Summerset bird on the back, the third coin has the khajiiti Mane on one side and the two moons on the back, and the fourth coin has Svargrim on one side and the wolf of Solitude on the back. Morrowind-Summerset-Elsweyr-Greymoor. The new statue looks really good next to my other three statues.
As per usual I read nothing about the chapter aside from the announcement. I watched no trailers and no streams that could spoil anything. But from the announcement and the vampire lord statue my mind immediately went to the Volkihar vampires and my original theory was that we'd meet Serana again and we'd be the ones to lock her inside the cave where she's found in Skyrim. Turns out that wasn't the case, but the story we got was still so good.
For some reason I didn't expect to see the Ravenwatch vampires again, so I was both surprised and happy when I ran into Fennorian, and then later when I met up with Gwendis for a side quest in Blackreach. House Ravenwatch is apparently very important to whatever is going on with the Ashen Lord and I bet we'll see more of them in the next to installments of the Dark Heart of Skyrim season. Does this mean that Verandis will come back?!?!?!?! Can we save him?!?!?!Darien came back, please let Verandis come back.
The introductory cinematic starts with a Skyrim joke as you literally wake up on a wagon and look around at your companions. I love how much Solitude looks like Solitude.
Blackreach was amazingly beautiful, and we got Falmer for the first time in ESO! :D I really, really hope we'll have more to do with the Falmer later, maybe another story of some amazingly untouched Snow Elves like in Dawnguard? That would be really cool.
The harrowstorms are amazing! They work like the anchors from the base gamne or the geysers in Summerset, except the harrowstorms are actually challenging and pretty effing hard to complete on your own. Both anchors and geysers are easily done alone, but harrowstorms and dragons not so much. The only annoying thing about harrowstorms is that they spawn randomly and don't go around in a circle like the anchors. This means that if you just have one left to do to complete the map you may have to end up waiting for a really long time. I spent over an hour waiting for my last one. For dailies it isn't so annoying, as an active harrowstorm easily can be seen from quite a distance and they usually take long enough to complete that you have time to run all the way over there and get at least one hit in.
And then we have the antiquities system, aka treasure hunting. It's a little mini puzzle game and I really enjoy it. First you have to complete the tutorial in Solitude and then you're on your own. Scry for antiquities by completing the puzzle (connect all the "swirls") and then run off to the area indicated on your map. In this area you have to find a pile of dirt. The Eye in mementos help point you in the right direction if you equip it on your quick slots. When you find it you have to dig, which is another little mini game. Both of these mini games get harder the higher your level gets and the higher the item level is (green is very easy, blue is a bit harder, purple even harder, yellow I haven't even got to yet). I very much enjoy going around all of Tamriel, to all of the zones, scrying and digging for treasure. It's so much fun! :D
The fact that Greymoor sparked so many fun times for me kind of made me dive headlong into ESO again, and I'm back to logging in every day. I even joined a guild. Let's see how long it will last this time :3
Toni wanted to watch this because he has read the books. I wanted to watch this because it seemed the right level of crazy.
Right off the bat we both got insane Doctor Who vibes from the intro and actually from the show in general. Samuel Barnett could make a really fun Doctor.
The first season was a crazy introduction with timetravel, soul-swapping, and paradoxes stretching almost 200 years back. I loved watching Todd grow from "I don't want anything to do with this" to "Alright I'll just go with it."
The second season was even more crazy, but probably an accurate description of how people would react when thrown into a fantasy world and being the subject of a prophecy. Especially when that fantasy world leaks out into the real world. The solution to this season was really, really good. I loved watching Amanda grow over the course of these two seasons.
The second season ended with them all talking about something big that was coming, and I really want more of the show. But it was cancelled after the second season.
I assume that nobody missed the fact that 2020 is cancelled, right? When Lordi's 2020 tour was cancelled and postponed until 2021 they decided to do a three-hour live stream with a Q&A and concert available for a small fee. They would answer questions from the fans and play songs requested by the fans along with songs that they hadn't played in ages.
I was really excited when they announced this for Friday May 22nd and then I was totally bummed out when I realised that I worked Friday evening and Saturday morning. The stream would start at 9pm my time and continue three hours, which meant it would still be on-going when it was my bedtime (gotta get up at 5.30am for the morning shift). I was so bummed that I wouldn't be able to watch it and said as much on the band's Facebook page, where the band (or probably the page mod) got back to me and said that the stream would be available for watching up to seven days after original streaming.
Sold.
I bought a ticket and got the show going on my phone (with headphones) while also keeping an eye on things at work. This wasn't difficult as unfortunately the first 30 minutes suffered from severe lagging and then the streaming site suffered a DoS attack and the stream was unavailable for about 30 minutes while this was resolved. But when it came back up it worked absolutely perfectly for the rest of the evening, which meant I could watch a portion of the show lag free on my way home from work. Because the stream was unavailable for 30 minutes they decided to prolong the show for 30 minutes and thus ended up playing for 3½ hours. They also extended the availability of the stream to 14 days.
After dinner tonight I watched the entirety of the stream, which ends up at almost 4 hours. The setting was a lot more cosy than a regular gig and so it quickly became apparent what a group of adorable dorks the band is. Since Kalma (bassist) left the group, my favourite member simply became Mr. Lordi himself, and while he's still adorable (that's not a word you expect in relation to this band, is it?), Mana (drummer) really really grew on me over the course of this stream.
In-between songs there were short clips featuring various people important to the band behind the scenes. And because of those videos I now know a hell of a lot about Rovaniemi (Mr. Lordi's hometown) that I'm not sure I needed to know xD
The stream was amazing. I loved it. I have now officially seen Lordi live four times. Even if this time suffered from a deplorable lack of pyrotechnics ;)
I made a playlist from the setlist of the show on Spotify :)
Back when I worked at my very first part time job after moving up here there was a guy who raved about the Dead Space lore and recommended me that I played through the series. I didn't get around to it until now ^^;
The first game is 12 years old, if you can believe it. Twelve!! And unfortunately it hasn't aged well. There was severe mouse lag in the game, which meant that the camera moved as if in slow motion and it really made it hard to play. I also hated the POV. Felt like I was staring more at the back of the guy's head than I was looking for monsters. I played around with the in-game sensitivity but it didn't help. Every guide I found online that claimed to solve the issue said to disable V-sync in-game and enable it through the GPU control panel, which admittedly made it smoother but it was still moving in slow-motion. Playing with it felt like my eyes were drunk but my head wasn't. It was just really uncomfortable and was the reason why I could only handle 45-60 minutes per session.
Because every single guide I could find claimed the v-sync solution as the golden solution and no other alternatives were given and I couldn't figure it out myself, I finally decided to give up. I couldn't play the game when it was like that. However, from the little I played I got interested in the story and the lore and I was already planning on playing the second and third games in the series.
So in the end I watched a playthrough to see what happened and where the game led. Disappointingly, the ending to Dead Space 1 was very obvious. I hope it gets better in two and three (whenever I get around to them).
Immediately after we were done with Borderlands 2, I started playing Tales from the Borderlands.
Theis is easily one of Telltale's best, if not the best.
I really liked both Rhys and Fiona, which is cool because a lot of things usually have a side character or two that I care about more than the main character(s).
The story was exciting, engaging and so funny, and despite being done in Telltale's classic point-and-click style there was a surprising amount of action.
Telltale's comic style works very very very well with Borderlands' cartoony style.
I heard about this show a couple years ago when it was brand new, but only recently did I see that it was available on Netflix and so ofrc I had to watch it.
Costume drama, Victorian era (but in New York), the very beginnings of psychoanalysis and forensics, and a serial killer (possibly inspired by Jack the Ripper). What's not to love?
There's an interesting perspective of homosexuality, budding transexuality, and what they, in the 19th century, called sodomy. There's corruption in the police force. Theodore Roosevelt is in the show. And it shows the stark contrasts between the wealthy New York and the poor New York.
I absolutely adored the series and I was so happy when I saw that they had made an adaptation of the next book too. Because this is originally a book (that I haven't read, but is definitely on my tbr now).
Well, that just took an embarrassing amount of time. We started playing Borderlands 2 just after we finished Borderlands 1 back in 2018, but life and work happened in-between and somehow, here we are. One and a half years later.
I understand now why people say that Borderlands 2 is the best game of the series. Like wow this was a ride. The base game was amazing, and unlike with the original Borderlands I can actually remember the whole story with Angel, Jack and Hyperion despite the disjointed play times.
I played Maya and Toni was Axton, but it was so great to see our old Vault Hunters come back in Borderlands. I played Mordecai in the original and I was so sad by what happened to Bloodwing in 2. Way sadder than I expected to be. I was more sad about Bloodwing than I was about Roland xD
We can all agree that Tiny Tina is the best thing about the game, right? Good. This is all the introduction she needs:
Borderlands 2 was an amazing ride that somehow took only 100 hours but spread out over 1½ years. How did that happen? Adulting got in the way.
So many laughs were had while playing this and we both agree that Tiny Tina's Assault on Dragon Keep is our favourite DLC.
Commander Lilith and the Fight for Sanctuary was the DLC released last year and in hindsight it probably would've made more sense to play through the Pre-Sequel and Telltale's Tales from the Borderlands before we played this DLC. But I only figured that out after I had played Tales and we started on the Pre-Sequel :P
When I publish this it's been about a week since I last played. This stint in Skyrim has been really cool, but it's seemingly over now.
Legacy of the Dragonborn is the most extensive and detailed mod I have ever played. To begin with I got the mod because I really needed a place where I could show off all my loot and not just shuck it in a chest and never look at it again. Legacy of the Dragonborn comes with a museum to do just that.
But it becomes so much more. There are several quests related to the museum itself, but at one point you get to found an Explorers Guild which kicks off the best fanmade delve into Falmer history that I have ever seen.
The mod is fully voice-acted (really well to boot) and even affiliated with a bunch of other popular mods so you can show off your loot from those mods as well. A few of them are The Forgotten City, Moonpath to Elsweyr, The Cowl of Nocturnal, Moon and Star, Artifacts of Boethiah, Oblivion Artifacts, and many many more.
Every ruin (Nordic, Dwarven, Falmer) you go to will have archeology sites that will allow you to do an archeological dig and take fragments with you. Fragments that can later be combined into artifacts to put up on display. The more archeological digs you do the higher your archeology skill gets (complete skill tree with perk points!) and you get benefits from digging. I really liked the whole archeology thing
After I finished the questing of the mod it mostly became all about filling the museum and completing the displays. I confess that I got bored of artifact hunting about halfway through and that's the reason I stopped playing Skyrim this time around.
I've been curious about this show for a while so when we finished The Haunting of Hill House, we continued on our Netflix tour with this one.
It seemed to be straight up our alley with superpowers and superheroes. I think I liked it more than Toni, but we both enjoyed it.
I heard of this show via Tumblr, actually, because Tumblr loves Gerard Way and MCR (who doesn't). And after we finished this show I bought all the volumes of the graphic novel, although I haven't had the time to read them yet.
We figured out pretty early on that Vanya was the cause and the catalyst for everything that happens. It was pretty obvious from a storytelling point of view. Still the show offered a couple of surprises which I'm not gonna tell because spoilers.
Five is easily my favourite character, but I also really liked Hazel and Klaus. Klaus grew on me a lot after the episode in which he accidentally goes back in time and becomes a war veteran. So much character growth in a single episode.
1. The Miniaturist, by Jessie Burton. I don't know how I feel about this book. I enjoyed reading it but when it ended I felt strangely disappointed. Reflecting back nothing much happened, while a lot of things happened. There was a lot of empty words and the characters fell flat. It seems like the author spent a lot of time choosing her words and making her prose pretty, but not even close to the same amount of time in making her characters seem like real people. All the characters behave in illogical and erratic manners, that move the story forward but do nothing for their credibility. It feels like the ending fell flat. The finality to it was disappointing and nothing is resolved. The title is misleading as almost nothing in this book has to do with the miniaturist. It seems odd to name a book after someone who has so little influence on the actual story. Every twist to the story was expected, except the one evening involving a dagger. That scene only helped diminish the characters' credibility even more. Nothing is resolved, nothing is explained, and the only lesson the author seems to want to impart to her readers is that the world sucks and you can't do anything about it. The ball keeps rolling, the cups keep spilling over, and all you can do is to try to keep up because you don't stand a chance of stopping it.
2. Sea of Ghosts, by Alan Campbell. My boyfriend read this book before me and he really didn't like it so my expectations were extremely low for this one, but I figured I might as well read it. It starts off pretty slow. I don't like Granger, even after finishing the book I'm not a fan of Granger. I really like Ianthe and Briana, though, and I'm fascinated by Maskelyne. So far so good. The world is steampunk meets sci-fi meets fantasy meets dystopia. This book is the absolute definition of science fantasy. The only thing that's extremely jarring to me in this book is how they are terrified of the ocean throughout the whole thing, a touch of it will change you, being submerged will kill you, and yet Granger survives going for a dive and a prolonged swim? Either the author unwittingly ruined the danger element he'd given the sea, or he made his beloved main character a superhero, or there will be answers further down the line. I also don't agree with the way Ianthe came into her power. It was too out of nowhere. I understand that strong emotion like anger and fighting for your life can make you do things - but if that was the only requirement for Ianthe to discover her power then she would've killed Maskelyne many times over before they even got to Awl. The way she discovered what she could do was way too convenient.
3. Braindroppings, by George Carlin. I really love Carlin's stand-up shows and so I thought I'd love this. I didn't. Apart from a few giggles and chuckles spread throughout the book it was mostly a case of looking ahead to see how many pages were left before the book was finished. To top it off the book hasn't aged well, some of the jokes in it are now so old they have passed the point of being funny because they aren't relevant on any level anymore. I could see how they were once funny, but the world has changed too much since they were. I.e. the short about guys and their walkmans - like what would Carlin have to say today about all the people wearing headphones and listening to music/e-books/podcasts pretty constantly? Not a lot of nice things probably, if that one joke is any indication. While reading this book I could hear Carlin's voice in my head, telling the jokes with all the mannerisms he used on stage, but it didn't help to make this book better.
4. Nights at the Circus, by Angela Carter. 1½ months and 200 pages later I decided to DNF this. It's supposedly a classic, but I've never heard of it. Nothing about this book speaks to me. The characters fell flat and the story progression makes no sense. I hate when a character falls in love for no apparant reason, and the journalist in this book is supposedly so in love with Fevvers that he follows her to the circus, after having a very one-sided conversation one single night. She did all the talking, he barely got a word in sideways. These two characters have no chemistry and seem to make no connection and so their feelings make no sense, almost like their relationship was made up on the fly to somehow make the story move forward. And yet it doesn't. After 200 pages it feels like nothing has happened, nothing at all. And I just can't with this book. This was sent to me as part of Blind Date with a Book, it's the first book I read from my six months with them and I hope not all of the books they send will be like this. I enjoy the freak show/circus setting and so this was a huge disappointment.
5. Taken In, by Elizabeth Lynn Casey. This was a lost-and-found at the hotel that nobody ever claimed and I figured I might as well read it. It was terrible, which is why it took me so long to finish. Obvious plot is obvious. The murder is so simple, there's basically no mystery to it and it's evident who the murderer is pretty much from the point where the victim's neighbour says she saw a tall guy bang on his door and then walk past her door. Like duh. This is what we'd call "old lady mystery trash" and they can be entertaining, but this one just made me sigh in exasperation. Tori is a Mary Sue. Rose's personality is that she's old. Margaret Louise and Beatrice are painfully blatant stereotypes, Dixie is basically not involved and Leona is a bitch. This book has no redeeming qualities other than that it was easy reading and done pretty quickly when I set my mind to it.
This is an anthology of short clips that are usually very profound. They are made in a variety of ways, from live action and cartoons to animation and stop-motion. Most of them were under 10 minutes long, and yet managed to convey a very strong message and a lot of feelings.
There are 18 episodes and my top five favourites (and short youtube clips to introduce them) in no specific order are:
When the Yogurt Took Over
Pretty self-explanatory. Sentient yogurt ends up ruling the world.
Alternate Histories
A museum shares its most requested alternate history simulation: what if Hitler had died before he led Germany? Several "possible" death scenarios follow.
Good Hunting
If Avatar was dark and not for children. That was the vibe I got from this story. It's so very dark and also sad, but hauntingly beautiful as well. How rich people ruin the world and how it fights back.
Three Robots
After the apocalypse. All the people are gone and only robots remain. Two robots go with a tour guide through a ruined city.
Beyond the Aquila Rift
Very Mass Effect-y. I got such extreme Mass Effect vibes from this that I'm not sure if that's the only reason I like it or not. The general story is quite common and has been done before, but this is so well-made.
All of the episodes are so worth a watch, and it was very hard to pick out five favourites. I liked all of them for different reasons. You can watch all of them in less than a day. It's all on Netflix. Go.
Finally got around to trying the two new dungeons with tio yesterday :) We started with some old familiar dungeons to get us warmed up and then off we went.
First up was Icereach. Basically a prequel to Direfrost Keep; a dungeon that's been in the game since the very beginning. The dungeon is in the mountains between Skyrim and High Rock and is basically just a snow-covered ice-clad fortress full of Forsworn witches and Hagravens. It had some interesting mechanics that'll probably prove really difficult on veteran before we really learn them. First of which was the use the flames engulfing one of the players in the group to thaw the stranglers that would siphon the life from another player. Another was the dps race against the Mother Witch and how to utilise the flames and the ice storm against each other. We never really tried this because normal doesn't require it, but I have an idea that you're supposed to use the flames engulfing one player to stop the ice storm chasing another players. Kind of get them to neutralise each other. The Enervating thralls were just annoying on normal, but probably real threats on veteran.
The story in this dungeon reintroduces Lyris Titanborn; one of the Five Companions from the main quest and it was so nice to see her again :3
The second dungeon was Unhallowed Grave. This is a desert dungeon found in Bangkorai. It's being infiltrated and looted by a Forsworn summoner and his army of draugr. This dungeon posed a bit more of a challenge to us, even on normal. The second boss of the dungeon needs to be defeated with the help of a puzzle and this puzzle took us ages to figure out, but once we did figure it out we defeated the boss pretty easily. The third boss was pretty straightforward, but the adds it summoned enveloped the dps and healer and you had to defeat them alone because you couldn't move. The add created a wall of spinning swords keeping you close until you killed it. Will probably prove really fricking annoying on veteran. The fourth boss gave me flashbacks to the last boss of Vaults of Madness. It was basically that with the added heavy use of the grapple hook introduced in the game with Elsweyr last year. Instead of just going outside or inside a bubble depending on where the Lich does his attack (as is the way in Vauls of Madness), this boss had you grapple to ledges to avoid attack in the main area and then grappling back to avoid the attack on the ledges. Easy to figure out, but difficult to get a proper grap on in mid-battle (at least enough grap to avoid falling off :P tio!!) And then we had the final boss. The Forsworn summoner, which seemed like a pretty straightforward boss, until he summoned the largest frickin bone colossus ever in recorded history and I was too busy trying to get a picture of it to keep everybody alive. That monstrosity will prove a definite challenge on veteran.
This second dungeon relied heavily on the grapple hook. Both to navigate it and to defeat the bosses. And it's one of the few novel idea that's been introduced to ESO lately. The grapple hook is a lot of fun and it was definitely a different experience to have to rely on it to complete a dungeon.
