Ploppin' Fresh

Saga truly is excellent... right on par with Y: The Last Man, which is saying something. I only read the trade paperbacks of comics, so even though they release monthly (or so issues) for a lot of the current comics I read, I wait until they're collected in one easy edition. The benefit is that I get to build up excitement over the course of a year (sometimes longer) waiting for the trade to come out, leaving me like a little kid when it finally comes out. It's also cheaper, less time consuming and tempers my ability to obsess.

We had a crazy-ass ice storm here in Ontario over the weekend, followed by -15 temperatures and lots of snow. Chaos out there. Happy holidays, all!

Ahhh. It was my understanding that Payday was much fun. And I'm not even going to get into it with you over Dayz.

I'm very jealous that you're all going to see each other in the next couple of weeks. Perhaps I should book a flight?

I still haven't even played DayZ or Payday with any of you! How can you expect me to play Battlefield?

Just watched the first episode. Really enjoyed it!

This is where things start to get super nerdy.

I don't know if you use your PS3 anymore, Anton, but at the beginning of this year, I decided to try out the PS+ option, which I managed to get for 15 months at 39.99, as opposed to the 12 months@49.99. There are a ton of games that I've wanted to play over the past few years but never got around to buying/trying out that, amazingly, have been all the games that have come out on the PS3 this year, including: Spec Ops: the Line; SR3; Deus Ex; LBP2; LBP Karting; Infamous 2; Sleeping Dogs (lots of fun as well); Battlefield 3; Hitman Absolution; as well as a few indie titles, like The Cave. For the price I paid, I'd say I've gotten more than my value's worth out of this list already, and I still have another 7 months of games to come. I'm not sure what impact PS4 is going to have on this, but I wish I had considered the PS+ option earlier. *This message is brought to you by Sony Corporation

I actually just finished the third game, which was the first in the series for me. I put in nearly 70+ hours and loved basically every minute of it. For straight-up, sandbox, arcade-y action, this game can't be beat. The only problem I had with the game was the lack of story. Perhaps I needed to play the first two, but that's where I felt GTA outshone SR. I don't think I'll get around to the 4th for some time... likely wait for it to come down in price.

This could easily be a Tony Hawk video game.



The ending is fantastich.

Also, I'd have to say that watching a movie like Into Darkness should indeed give you hope. While it was definitely a poor Trek film, there was enough there to make a good star wars film. Abrams fucking loves the original movies. Has made that absolutely clear through nods in his own series and movies. This film is in much better hands, I'd say.

Do we have a skateboarding/BMX section or are we just using this? Anyhow, I'll just drop this here. The watch is worth it even if it's just for three seconds starting at 4:00. The super slow motion (that's right, I'm refraining from shortening it because that practice is getting way out of hand... froyo? FROYO? Jesus) right at the end of the video is pretty stellar as well.

That is truly amazing.

This is the worst film I've seen in probably 10 years. Zack Snyder has slowly chipped away at all the merit he built up with his Dawn of the Dead remake and now has none left. Every one of his films I go into with a bit of hope and every time I walk out of the theatre, I'm let down a little more. This was definitely the final straw. He is now just slightly above Michael Bay, but only just. Awful. Reprehensible.

Bravo! Now get me to a punnery!

Well, I saw Into Darkness this afternoon, and while I enjoyed it, I have to agree with Al on many of his points. Much of it felt like a generic blockbuster without any of the ticks and beats that make it a Trek film. Sure, there are plenty of nods to the original series and the actors do a fine job of capturing the essence of the original characters, but there's definitely a hollowness. I think Al really hit the nail on the head when he posits that there is hope for the new Star Wars films if Abrams can bring this sort of frenetic energy and fun along with him because that's all I really took from this. Don't get me wrong, I really did enjoy this film: I laughed, enjoyed the action, appreciated the nods, thought Cumberbatch did an excellent job with what he was given (though I think so much more could have been done with this character), but this was definitely style over substance. It actually felt a lot like the Avengers from last summer, which I also really enjoyed: really well-done summer blockbusters, but take generous liberties b/c they can. I definitely recommend it, just don't go into it expecting the Trek of old... which I guess is largely a good thing.

Oh, in terms of NPCs: Kevin and I had a helicopter at the weekend. I had a broken leg, so we were going to fly to Cherno to get some morphine. Kev suggested that I take over flying, as he'd have to be the one to make it to the hospital on foot. I have very little experience flying, and didn't realise the auto-hover feature was on, so when Kev suggested I turn it off, I put the helicopter in a bit of a ridiculous spin, causing it to crash. We were about 2000 metres from Cherno at this point, so Kev ran on ahead to get the morphine while I crawled along the railway tracks. Once Kevin was in Cherno, bandit NPCs began firing on him. Took him quite some time to get out of there, but they followed him. When he finally reached the area I was in, he ended up being on higher ground than I was, but the NPCs had us pinned down. Kev and the NPCs had a fire fight at probably a range of 400-500 metres and they were coming pretty close with some of their shots (they may have even hit him at one point, though I can't say for certain). I crawled on my belly up the hill to where Kev was, with bullets zipping by or hitting the ground near me. Once I was safe, Kev managed to take most of them out at distance, then ran down to finish them off. Pretty awesome stuff.

If you've pissed them off or if they're bandits, they're pretty aggressive. Chase you down, unload lots of bullets on you. Having said that, if they're friendly, and you're in a vehicle, they're easy enough to run over. I've been emailing with the admin re: donations for a patch of land for clans. Not sure if you guys are interested, but here's the email I received from him today:

I'm giving out 8 pieces of my map.

Each piece of my map will get a hangar protected by GUID entrance, where you can save some vehicles and tents without fear of losing them to players
I offer this at a donation rate of 10/mo

Then you get your name put on the loading screen as a special thank you to our donators, and I'll personally spawn some vehicles into your hangar to get you started

I require that you build a clan around it, with AT LEAST 5 regular playing members, They and yourself will get a custom loadout

you can read more by registering and reading on this forum

spartanplayground.boards.net/

I've emailed him back asking if it's $10 per clan member, or $10 for clan. Will let you know what he says.

So, we've found a pretty stable server. We've been on it for days now and had no issues whatsoever. No hackers, friendly players, etc. I will add that this server may not appeal to everyone, as they've added way more vehicles, but you still need to find parts to get them running. Also, there are NPCs running about. If the NPC is a bandit, it'll shoot at you, otherwise the good guys won't shoot unless you shoot at them.

Anyhow, the server is Spartan PlayingGrounds, if you're interested. If you go to the old hideout, you'll find the following:




Plus a fully loaded chopper in the field behind the house!

As promised:

Kev and I continue to play this... mainly trying to stick to private servers to avoid hacking and such. Managed to find an Osprey tonight and have picked up enough parts now to get a humvee going. Still lots of fun. Have some images that I'll add tomorrow.

Ideally, they would skip over book four, apart from a few things. Don't know how they're going to get a season out of that.

I've played Cards Against Humanity three times in the past two weeks. Lots of fun.

My friend Nick made a bunch while we were in India, though this is by far our favourite.

Weekly Wipe has also been pretty damn good as well.