…reviewing Mass Effect 2, or at least giving my thoughts on it thus far, but the internets ate it. Even the draft.
Must’ve been really hungry.
Anyway, I’ll probably hold off until I’ve finished the game completely.
This was due Feb 4th on Xbox Live, but either due to a mistake or just overenthusiasm, it arrived on the Marketplace yesterday – the same day the PC beta opened to players.
You get one level to play, a multiple-stage assault where the attackers have to blow up eight installations in stages of two. The defenders have to, well, you know…defend. The games so far seem to be a rolling alternation of attack/defence with people hopping out when they get sick of it and being replaced by new players.
Sniper class? Check. No wander on the scope, it’s very solid – almost too solid at times, as people with knowledge of the high spots of the level can take disgustingly long shots with no drop on the bullet, no wind and no human error. I managed a couple of headshot kills on runners that were literally just me holding my sights over a gap in a fence miles away and pressing the trigger when a black dot appeared. I might as well have got a big red button that said “randomly kill some dude” on it.
Medic is fun, though. I particularly like the fact that he gets a LMG! Bullets for everyone! I found myself quite enjoying the whole run around zapping people back to life, but my teammates frustratingly refused to stand near the health packs I was constantly dropping for them. “Here guys! Have some free health!” “Oh no that’s not for us we like bullets in the face instead.” Boom. Dead guy. I resuscitate him again, drop a health pack because you ressurect at half health…he runs off and gets shot.
I endede up going and playing some MW2 instead. Finally lvl 20, which gives me access to…nothing interesting. Such a letdown.
It really does sadden me that people are so desperate to put the blame on something, or someone, as opposed to just plain old shitty chance that they are willing to ignore Dr Andrew Wakefield’s catalogue of horrendous malpractices and deceptions.
Especially disheartening is the thought that the whole thing was funded, in part, by a law firm looking to sue vaccine manufacturers.
This is why we can’t have nice things; like a happy, well-adjusted society. There will always be greedy motherfuckers ready and willing to prey on the fears of the layperson to sell snake oil and lawsuits. There will always be people too malleable and proud to accept the fact that their problems don’t have a tangible source that they can go harass and kick in the doors of.
There will always be a Daily Mail.
Since most people won’t look past the jump, here’s the money shot:
Hippo loves him some climbing.
More images after the jump, watch your bandwidth!
Read more…
Photo taken at Clifton crag, located in Dumfries & Galloway.
Apologies for shitty scanning.
Watched The Hurt Locker last night. For the most part, it’s very, very good. Kathryn Bigelow overcomes the majority of her urges to slip back into genre conventions, and the tight focus, both in shooting and script, on the three-man Explosive Ordinance Disposal squad is a decision that pays off consistently throughout the film.
Lisa woke me up this morning to pass on the news that one of the pre-reg pharmacists she used to work with had updated her Facebook page, informing us that a man broke into her house in Bradford on Friday night (they have been burgled there before, despite bars over the windows and doors).
Sally and her boyfriend were both assaulted. Her brother was killed.
The police urgently seek 20 year old Raeben Borhan Kareem in connection with the incident.
Fucking world.
On the one hand, I had a great weekend. On the other, it’s been a bit hard going. The latter, dear reader, is no-one’s fault but my own and thankfully the experience of the former outweighs it a great deal.
First off, Allan’s wedding was great. Really just a very nice experience all-round. It was great to see him and his now-wife, to share that very special moment with them, and to catch up with a lot of people I haven’t seen in a very long time.
I do have photos, but I’m dreading going through the memory card to see what they are like. Lighting, movement and the fact that every other person present was packing a camera or cameras were factors that played significantly against me actually getting any decent shots in, and the few that I do have may need some fiddling before they are even halfway decent. It wasn’t my weekend for taking photographs, really.
In an attempt to perhaps mitigate this personal shortfall, I appropriated an old scanner that was gathering dust at the parental abode, with the aim of scanning in a lot of old climbing photos. Perhaps, I thought, this will serve to balance out the great failure on my part to capture images from what may have been one of the year’s most memorable occasions. Also, it might give me the impetus to have a really good look for the big box of climbing pictures that Allan, Alistair and myself collected over several years, and seem to have lost.
Sadly, there’s no Windows 7 driver for this scanner. I can get a Windows 2000 driver to install, and it will claim the device is there AND operational, but I’m fucked if I can get any of my image applications to produce a response from it.
It’s a Trust Flatscan USB 19200, in case anyone has any ideas. And yes, I know scanners are to be had on the cheap these days. I guess it’s my Scots nature coming to the fore here.
Right. I’d better get off to bed. My eyelids are starting to hang a bit heavy and it’s only a matter of time before I get shouted at for typing too loudly. Photos, hopefully, to follow.
On the way home, I thought about what I wanted to cook for dinner. Inspired by a friend’s tale of having made “tomato burgers”, being really big meatballs baked in passata, I thought meatballs might be the way forward. We didn’t have any spaghetti, but that was fine – linguine is about as good in a pinch – and I got to thinking, how do I make meatballs, and what kind of sauce should I make?
Meatballs, it turns out, are the easiest thing to make even if you’re improvising. You shape meat…into balls. I added an egg to help as a binder, and some very finely chopped onion and seasoning, but otherwise it was like making balls of meat. I can’t dress it up as anything more advanced than shaping spheres from minced flesh. I’m sorry.
For the sauce, I was momentarily tempted to buy passata ready to go. But then it occurred to me that we have tinned tomatoes, tomato paste, and access to a blender. It almost seemed like I was pre-equipped to make my own damn sauce. So; olive oil, garlic, onions, a bit of frying, a yellow pepper, more frying, tomatoes and paste, a big chunk of pecorino chopped up into little bits, and a handful of black olives, more heating, stuck in the blender and given a thorough homogenising, seasoned and reheated – sauce.
Interestingly, it came out orange, presumably from the cheese and pepper in there. It looked like I’d made a carrot-based soup more than sauce for pasta.
Anyway, it was very tasty.
This weekend my good friend Allan gets married, so I will be up in Scotland helping to celebrate the happy union of he and his fiancee. Everyone say it with me now:
Awwwwwwww.
Last night Lisa and I went to see “Up in the Air”, starring George Clooney and directed by Jason Reitman (who also did Juno).
The basic premise is focussed on Ryan Bingham (Clooney) – he’s a corporate downsizer; the person that management in large companies bring in to fire people. It’s a very American concept, where contractually people can be working one day and fired the next – there’s no notice period or negotiation.
He travels constantly, and he’s the type of guy that likes it that way; he has nothing at home (the fridge full of condiments a nod to Fight Club) and the only thing that satisfies him is the elite status that frequent flight brings. Again with the Americana. Neither the writer or the director are attempting for an everyman feeling in the movie. It’s most definitely aimed at America. Here is corporate America, it’s saying. Our industries are dispersed, depersonalised. As a result, some of the people working as part of that are, too. If I was being overly analytical, I’d pour it on about the general message of the movie being an indictment of corporate structure versus the inherent goodness of the basic family unit, but I’ll leave off for now. Certainly in ten years time, Up in the Air isn’t going to be taking pride of place in many film studies curricula.
As you’d expect, it’s not the set-up for an action movie. It’s a think piece, the idea being that despite his job and his character, Ryan is essentially a good person and the interruption of his routine – internal changes in his company, a relationship with a fellow career traveller, and a family wedding – all cause him to act contrary to his anti-social personality.
In short, the arc of the story is entirely predictable. Dramatic things throw the main character off balance, and his recovery constitutes an epiphany which is the filmmaker essentially making a statement about what people are and how even though the lead has driven himself to a point so alien from that statement that he makes motivation speeches about avoiding commitment, he is invariably drawn back into the fold by the better angels of his nature.
As with all films of this type it depends on the lead to carry the story. There are no surprises in this film, and the drama is so light that it’s left to Clooney to give the whole thing depth.
Thankfully, he does. Your milage may vary with him, but watching the little tics and frowns interrupting his outwardly cool facade is fascinating viewing. He doesn’t have a massive range as an actor, but inside those boundaries he’s very, very good at what he does.
Worth watching at the cinema? Probably not considering cinema prices, although you’re guaranteed a good seat with Book of Eli, All about Steve and Daybreakers all opening the same weekend. They aren’t “big hitters”, really, but all of them are probably more suited to the cinema experience than Up in the Air.
Definitely one for the LoveFilm/NetFlix list though, if you fancy a fairly light movie that checks in at a little under 2 hours, although if you’re in the market for a must-see Clooney movie then Out of Sight and Michael Clayton take precedence (in that order).
