They killed it. Hitman chapter 1.

First off… the royal we have given up on regular updates. Too much going on right now with trying to find a new job and some other side projects. Mondays will remain the day for updates. We will keep you updated…. Now on to the topic of the week.

As someone who tend to lean on the side of click bait…. This was perhaps the most click baited title I have done so far.

But I feel it is ok, especially as I more or less predicted doom and gloom for the Hitman series with them going episodic. Seems like I will have to eat crow. The first episode is really solid and a nice nod back to the classic hitman formula of sandbox playground. An open level and you are left to your own devices as to how you like to solve the mission. A fantastic tangle of AI interactions and triggers that if left to their own might seem predictable but once you start poking around your actions causes a ripple effect that in turn change the playing field.

Now this is just the first episode. The one that one can assume have been in development for the longest time but it also set a good bar for the following maps to hit. Should they reach said bar the game will most likely land on many GoTY lists as an example of how to do episodic content the right way outside of a TellTale game. Should they not… At least the starter pack will be worth the 15 bucks it cost and you can keep on replaying that trying to find the most creative ways of breaking the game.

So the game… It is for all intents and purposes a Hitman game, you are bald, people need to be stuffed in to boxes, carrying a gun in the open is bad and so on. New or at least new-ish is the soft version of your super-assassin sense. The game has a mode you can use that track information you see and hear and paint you guideline to follow. This can ofc be turned off if you like to go in old school. This way the game remains open to veterans and newcomers alike.

But that is all there is right now. I will return and make a more in-depth review of the game once all the parts are out and we can see how it meshed together. But for now I can absolutely recommend the starter edition as it stands on its own very well. 

Going Forward.

So after some thinking and tinkering i have come up with how i will handle updates on this here space.

The blog will update Mondays and Fridays regularly. Mondays will be my general subject spot. This can and will be anything and everything that catches my attention. Fridays will be the DC nation where i look at the DC tv-shows (Supergirl, Flash, Arrow and Legends of Tomorrow)

I will mostly focus on story and fun little tidbits and trivia. There will be spoilers.

On top of that there might be other less regular updates if something happens that i feel is time sensitive enough for em to not save it for the Monday update.

Among the things to look forward to is a review on Deadpool, my take on Shadowhunters vs City of bones (the movie)

So a very short update today but there will be a much meatier post come Thursday.

So until then, be nice and stay safe.

Running Wild

This is the second in a series of posts that will happen in rapid succession before i settle back in to a more regular posting pattern. I hope you enjoy.

Today we will talk about a subject near and dear to me, namely the Crew. Back in November the game got it´s first major content injections with the Wild Run expansion. With this came three so called extreme specs in the form of Drag, Drift and Monster truck. It also featured a new event called the Summit. This is a set of PvP and PvE challenges themed around things such as a place on the map, a car brand or a nationality. The idea is to compete on a server wide leaderboard and win parts, extreme car kits crew credits or exclusive cars. It is set up in such a way that there are a series of qualifying events throughout the month leading up to each summit. Score at least an overall bronze medal in three qualifiers and you get to enter the summit. This is not hard any anyone one want to can get their medals.

The event has a set list of game modes but the tracks change from event to event. But there will always be one event each for the new extreme specs and two time attack races.  One is open to any car of the corresponding spec and the other is locked to a specific brand of car or bike. Yes bikes have come to the Crew and they use the regular specs such a street or dirt. Each event also have a crew and a regular PvP event. And don´t worry if you do not have a garage rivaling Jay Leno, the game lends you a car for any event that you lack a car for and the PvP event put all players in equally good cars to make things even.

So all in all the Wild Run have given the Crew players something to do once they reach max level. It is still the same game but now at least there is that element of competition that the old PvP system did not deliver. They have also made it easier to connect to a PvP game, something I complained about in my original review.

But all is not sunshine and puppies, a fair number of players who bought the gold edition or the season pass felt that the Wild Run expansion should have been included in the season pass and that the fact that there is now content locked behind a paywall is something unsightly in this day and age. There has also been complaints that the bikes and the drag spec make the game pay to win since a good player can use these to gain an advantage in some races(bikes) and decimate some skills challenges (drag and bike). While this does have merit there is no actual reward beyond recognition topping these things. The final thing that get under peoples skin is the ever current presence of cheaters, previously easy to avoid and with very little impact in the game at large. The new addition of a competitive leaderboard in combination with actual prices for to top players have had them coming out of the woodwork. Ubisoft claims to be working on the issue but only time will tell. For most people the impact is minimal and only the very top percent will ever really run the risk of losing anything from these “players”.

So to cap things off the Wild Run have injected a much needed purpose in to the Crew and with the promise of more varied qualifier tracks and challenges in combination with the continued effort to introduce more cars and ways to customize them the future looks really bright for this game. 

WTFIWWY… Hammer-time F!

So… We are moving in to election times here in Sweden and this equals the erecting of what is called a “Valstuga”, a small shed that each local branchy of a political party put up on a busy square or similar place, usually they all end up in the same place and in essence create a political shantytown. =P so these small sheds anyway work as storage for marketing material and basic shelter from the Swedish summers. Now this is not anything uncommon... it happens each election but so far this year we have had 2 stories in national media about incidents connected to these valstugor.

The first one happened about a week ago as two carpenters working on erecting these sheds where attacked by a man who complained about the noise and then proceeded hit them with a hammer, he fortunately failed to cause any serious damage and retreated back towards his apartment but thanks to several witnesses police could apprehend the man without much of a incident. According to some the man did raise the hammer towards the police but either finally came to his senses or was incapable of getting to the police. It would fortunately turn out that the man had no political motives with his attack... He was just under the influence… deeply under… .. . Now i agree that people hammering away can be a very annoying sound… But the answer is never to pick up a hammer and try to beat the sound out of people… It does not work. It is also pretty stupid to do this in broad daylight as other people tend to notice your impromptu xylophone performance.

The second story is perhaps at the same time both less and more severe, but it does involve a valstuga and someone taking offense. 

It would seem that during the night one or more people felt that they had to redecorate the valstuga of up and coming political party F! (Read as fi, short for feminist initiative) using the Mythbuster school of re-decorating. After breaking down a wall they simply gutted the small shed and left a fairly neat pile of tinder outside. Much to my surprise they did not lit it on fire… This otherwise seems to be the primary form of entertainment for hooligans. Now again as I said before there are good and bad ways to express frustration, tearing down valstugor is not one of them... All that says is that you are immature and have the mental capacity of pack of instant-noodles. Especially as these places are usually manned during daytime by people who want nothing more than to argue over the finer points of how and why this or that party should in fact be named guildmaster and be given all the guildbank privileges. Then again I am sure the F! Will not complain about this in the long run as this give them a lot of free publicity and a free box of sympathy point, and traditional marketing is expensive these days. 

Now why I bring these two stories up is because we are still fairly early in the game for the not-so-Iron throne and I hope this is not an indication of days to come. I like living in a place where political violence for the most part consist of the very edge cases of conservative or communist parties having their Friday night love sessions and the rest posting angry rants on the internet. But this year we have two parties that are stirring the pot... so who knows.

So all I can say is.. People if you feel that you need to express your dislike with this or that party… either do it on election day (honestly the most efficient... but also the least individually visible way) or at least keep it civil and try to not cause bodily or financial harm to people…  But I guess that is hoping for too much.

So a little bird told me....

Just a very quick update to let people know i now have a twitter… still not really figured out what to do with it… But at least i have it.

Follow me at @TWiddesgard and make a side bet on when or if it will be anything useful on it

(first tweet does not count due to tutorial reason). .. The winner will get an image of a cupcake they can print and then think about consuming as long as they provide me with proper credentials. =)

So I guess I have to welcome myself to 2006… I wonder if there is a achievement for being a late adopter… =P