Ok.. Long time no see....

Sorry. 

Been a while, has it not. 

Can´t say it will get better. Life tends to get in the way. But i´l try. 

So why make this post? No idea really. I guess mostly to give my loyal following of Russian crawler bots something to digest. But also to see if i can re-ignite some kind of spark for writing on this blog. But the sad truth is that the current state of reality in my neck of the woods make me want to go all political, and i am not sure i would or even want to deal with the potential backlash... you see i have always picked my fights with brain-dead zealots fairly gingerly. Always been enough shit to get my arse literally and metaphorically handed to me as it is. No need to stick my dick in to a open wall-socket just for shits n giggles. Not my thing. I mean by all means go ahead if that is your thing (the wall-socket part... not the political part... that we all have to deal with at some point or another).

But i digress. 

So do i take the plunge and post every-time something tilts me sharply bitchward... Or do i stick to posting the odd geek culture related post if/when the fancy strikes... 

I do not know... 

Time will tell.. 

But until next time

Stay safe, be kind and play fair. 

bye. 

Assigned and Assange

Lately i have had reasons to question if nuclear cleansing (or at least chemical lobotomy) would not be a good solution in regards to humanity, or at least parts of it. The smaller of these things, the dismissal of  charges against Julian Assange as his cockroaching have made it impossible to push any sane and orderly legal action against him. Not unlike a fucking ransomware he got to dictate his own terms. But in doing so i have a solid opinion of his guilt. Not that he cares... But in my eyes he will always be a small man with a James Bond complex (and as such is pretty rapey by default.) and i have no doubt that he committed sexual assault and rape... Perhaps not the assault kind.... But still. I am glad that the circus have come to an end and that no more tax payer crowns will be spent on the fucker. I do wished that he would have been sentenced but a gilded cage is still a cage.  As long as his arse remain locked up he will not be out and about sticking his Jimmy where it does not belong.

Now while Assange is man full of him self.. In the larger scheme he is fairly insignificant. Unlike the inbreed troglodytes who decided to ruin the life of the creator of the Assigned Male comic. This comic depicts the trials and tribulations of being a trans-person in the current world. And manages to put a bit of positivity in it. This ofc rubbed some people the wrong way and a bunch of proclaimed nazi organized a combined hack and dox attack. This.... Is some real fucking bullshit. You can dislike the trans-movement all you want and as long as you keep that to muttering while you hatewank in your chamber... Nobody can´t really do much.. freedom of mind and all that.

But if you bring that in to the real world, getting a fucking terrorist attack going... Because make no fucking mistake... That is what it is... While it may look like a individual to individual attack it is by extent a attack at an entire section of society, not to mention society it self as it denies the freedom of it´s members. Going that far.. is way to far.

So this form of terrorism do a good job of illuminating how far we as a society have to go. Why things like PRIDE and the brave people on the barricades are still needed. And why we (as in men... because as sad as i am to admit.. a lot of the shit posted online comes form people who identify as born male in a male body.) need to deal with the idiotic shit that previous generation have created, it is our legacy and our task to break down. Toxic masculinity, macho culture, homo and trans-phobia and all the other dumb shit way to many still hold as gospel.


Sadly i fear things will get worse before it gets better... That is how it usually goes. Fortunately i still have hope as many of the people who educate your kids... .. . They are on the side of inclusion and tolerance. They get raised right and sane...

How about the Assange use his new freedom to track these sort of networks down. But i somehow get a feeling that he would not, even if he could.











Stay safe, be kind and play fair.

Mass Effect or Mess Affect...?

Oh boy did EA manage to piss people off with the release of Mass Effect Andromeda. 

Now my guess is that most people, like me. Had a fairly balanced opinion on the chance that EA would not in some way cock up the next chapter in the most beloved space saga on modern entertainment media. But we do very little in the way of waves on the internet. 

No! it is the loud people tossing a fit that get into the media. Now this was fairly meek coming on the heels of the "Jim sterling gave Breath of the wild a 7" tac nuke that had people losing not only their shit but literally try to melt someone with anger. It did also help that people had an actual cause for their anger. The game shipped with some serious issues such as poor animations and a story that need a few hours to get going. 

Personally, I was expecting the 4th game to be much like the third. That is not as bad as one might expect. I did like the third game but I also saw the entire game as one long ending chapter.Wrapping up some nice stories and the conclusion to  Mordin Solus arc made the entire series for me. At the point of the third game, I was pretty sure that some serious Deus Ex Machina shit would have to go down. Because there was no other way to solve the whole reaper issue. Now I did not really expect an actual god machine but hey, in the end it does not matter if you see the wizard or just the strings being pulled. The illusion is still broken. So I mostly disregard the last 10-ish minutes of the game and enjoy the ride to get there. I am sure that I will view the fourth entry into the series in the same way but I do get why people are pissed. 

Now the game in general is jaw-dropping and I found myself eerily fascinated by the face wrinkle system. And for some weird reasons, I find myself invested in the characters around the Ryders. Time will tell if that is enough to carry the game and if it will be enough of a hit to get proper sequels. 

For now Mass Effect Andromeda is a flawed game with potential. 

Also why does it always have to be some ancient but now lost civilisation...? It makes sense from a reality perspective but we kinda been there done that. 

Until next time, stay safe, be kind and play fair. 

Bye.

Iron Fist. Putty in a silk glove or seriously good? (spoilers)

Did the Marvel/Netflix behemoth do their first bungle?

Well according to the score aggregators. Yes.

But i personally think that is mostly due to the expectations not being met. You see Iron fist is not kung-fu action series, it is in fact not really a kung-fu anything... Like most other of the Marvel/Netflix shows it is a personal drama about facing great personal adversity. In this specific case, it is a pretty much spot on "fish out of water" story about how someone who is basically an emotionally stunted child in a grown man's body with an understanding of the modern world of a 10-year-old. 

Now that does not for a good trailer make and I feel that Netflix was feeling a bit like I do about the character... Danny Rand is dry white toast (in the comics usually clad in green and yellow spandex) with the personality of a Weetabix. So they did not really have much to work with. Most of Danny's good stuff comes from bouncing his dry wit off Luke Cage in the comics and his role is most of the time the sage and calm centre. He is of course not at that place in the series... In fact, in the series he is dumb as rocks. But in a way that does make me at least sympathetic towards him. We also need to remember that Matt Murdock carried a pretty big idiot ball in the first season too. 

Now the worry i have is how they are going to complete Danny´s journey before the defenders (or more realistically at the start of the Defenders) to give him a role outside of "glowing punch guy". I guess he could have the Tony Stark role for the team. Using his money to solve some of the issues like transport and medicine. But for all intents, acting as the moral and emotional centre of the group. I have a difficult time seeing that. 

But the show is solid and while I feel the lack of a solid villain might a bit distracting  It does open up for some serious twists and keep you invested in what will happen. But just stay away from the idea of this being something akin to a Jackie Chan movie. 

Because it sure as heck is not. 

Until next time.

Stay safe, be kind and play fair. 

Back in my day....

So as i was going through my Creative Cloud account to check up on a few things, i stopped and looked at the list of software that i have at my fingertips. For a short moment i think about how my 18 year old self would have felt knowing what toys that lay in his future. Sure we had Dreamweaver and Photoshop back then too. But compared to the things something like Photoshop is today... It was about a step above hacking lines in to stone. But unlike some people who only can see the saturation of a crowded market and a march of technology that slowly leaves them behind i am really glad for this. Not only does it make my life a lot easier as tools get better and become more affordable, but it acts as a equalizer. 

You see when i was young... Pretty much the only way to get Photoshop was to pirate the living shit out of it. Why... Cost... The product it self was aimed at a professional market and priced as such. At around 10-15.000 SEK it was not only a pipe dream, it was beyond reality. Me and others did reason that pirating it was a victim less crime. It was not like we took away sales from Adobe since we could not even buy the software even if we pooled together. 

Now i like to say that this does not excuse what we did, nor does it actually creates a moral ledge for us to stand on. Now the thing was ofc that outside of Paintshop Pro, Coral Draw and Photoshop there was not much to work with. So we simply did not give a fuck. We where young and brash. Not saying that renting your software from Adobe for a few hundred a month is all that much better. But going by the price of Adobe software in the past the pack i currently have active would run me in the hundred of thousands SEK range, and that is one torture i prefer to have delivered one needle prick at the time. 

Anyway... As i said it is a equalizer because today pretty much anyone can get a computer and a software package that let them work with digital art, and pretty much every smartphone have a camera good enough to at least start out as a photographer och video photographer. The gatekeepers are fading away and that in my mind is a good thing. Sure it is getting harder to stand out and it becomes much more about marketing your self and creating a brand. But at least you do not have to work with stone age tools or steal to get going. Heck you do not even have to bow down to the likes of Adobe, Free software like GIMP and the fairly cheap Clip Studio paint offer really good places to start with digital art and for video and audio there is a plethora of tools. 

I look forward to see what the future holds and i wish the kids of today the best of luck as they try their own wings creating the most amazing things. 

Not particularly much meat in this post, but what is a personal blog worth if one can not indulge in the fancy of thought every now and then. 

Until next time

Stay safe, be kind and play fair. 

Bye.

The working gamers dilemma.

So i was thinking about what to put my limited gaming time budget in to. While i now have the funds to get the games i want (not all at the same time.. but you know.) and also have a computer that can play them i have been putting some serious thinking time in to what game to get. While i still tend to put in a match or a few of OverWatch and i keep a subscription to WoW running for my own amusement.

But beyond that i am for all intents undecided. With the current Humble monthly offering Total War:Warhammer for a really good price. But it eats a lot of time and i am not sure i have what it takes to actually enjoy the game. Heck if i can not find time to sit down with the sims... Total War i think is a bit outside of my league. That is what i really like with Overwatch, casually playing quick matches demands no time from me. Just pop in... bang bang.. shut down.

But looking forward there is of course the next Mass Effect game, i have played through the original trilogy and i am looking forward to this one. But again.. time. It is a must play for me so time will have to be made i guess.

Beyond that it is mostly "older" games, as in games that have been released in the past year or so that simply kicked the arse of my old computer. I have been doing some the Division as i really enjoy the SP part of the game, shallow and not very complex as it is. This does lean me towards looking to pick up Watchdogs2 and while even older still i am really thinking about getting the final installment of the Witcher series again.. solid stuff.

and still i come back to the same old chestnut... time.

It is that old catch 22 like position that you only have the money to play games when you do not have the time... and vice versa. But since i can not live of casually playing the games i want to play... Heck even if i would make a career of Youtube would i have the time to play the games i like to play. That would also in way be to taint the well, as i would be making my poison of choice my job. Not sure how well that would turn out.

But that is i guess what getting older is, the dividing of time and resources. In that way life becomes a most harsh
resource management game. One without save files or resets.

But that is what it is.

Until next time
stay safe, be kind and play fair.

So 2016... People seem to be upset with you.

This year the tune in my social feed pretty much went like this "Hey 2016.. Why did you do X" with the implication that it has been a shit year. This i think says more about my age than it does anything else. You see the way i look at it is that my generation have been getting its first real taste of A: mortality and B: reality.

You see everything is cyclic, and much like the sweet summers children that we are we have been riding one such cycle that we now see coming to a close. All the "greats" are dying and the world is hitting "the shitter". Only that if we compare this to many other years in western society's long and storied past, 2016 have been a fairly good year. But that is of course  besides the point, after all compared to the black plague this year have been one of blissful bathing in milk and honey.

But the sheer naked fear that have been the reaction to the world (and by world i am talking about the US and north + central Europe... you know.. the world) changing. That is what has sort of taken me aback. Now i saw my fair share of bullying back in school and i am no real stranger to people being irrationally cruel or spiteful. But Jesus fucking Christ in a playpen.... The unstable nutjobs that usually occupy the sort of fringe where people have relatives who in the 50´s moved from Germany to Argentina or enjoy dressing up in white sheets and pointy hats, these people have not moved in to center stage and they look like a mix between a smug Garfield and Jimmy Cricket after a week on acid... Worst of course is that they infect the general population with their own brand of paranoia. This in turn makes things look a lot more shit than it really is. This in turn leads to things like the Swedish Democrats or Trump in politics and violence in the society.

Personally i used to give these fringe elements and the people they inspire a bit of slack, understanding that for many it is just a matter of society changing to fast for them... And in all honesty most people do not have the flexibility to constantly re-evaluate their morals and values. But i have had fucking enough. 2017 will be a year of me leveraging all my education, ability to do research and.. well... intelligence to grind people like that in to paste. I´l take every last shred of foul play and suppression techniques i know to run them in to the ground. They have had about 5 years to get their shit in order and if they refuse to do that... Why should i be the nice and polite one trying to cushion their emotional fallout as i deconstruct their arguments.

Not so much any more. I have spent 5+ years at a university learning how to look at the world from outside my little box, i do not demand that you do that.... But using Google and some common sense is not to much to ask.

Anyway... Next week we will be looking at my top picks from the entertainment media for 2016.

cheers

Random rants and musings

So the year is coming to a close and while i am not going to post my retrospect yet, saving that for the holiday. But i am starting to feel like this year has worn out its welcome. Not only have it been a utter shit show in the politics... domestic as well as abroad (thanks USA) but it has also been a fairly hit and miss in the cinemas and on TV. At least the gaming scene have had some good offers. More than a few "better than expected". But i´l get back to that later in the month. 

Now the thing that have made the most impact in my consumption of entertainment media came about this black Friday, i finally upgraded my computer... Or more correctly.. Replaced seeing as most components were 6+ years old, Any way this new machine is a monster compared to the old machine and for all intents does the job it need to do. It is sort of VR ready and play almost anything i need it to play without missing a single pace. Sure it will not do 4K anytime soon but i have no real need to go there at this point. But i can say this, it is pretty funny to see how much better one does when one does not have to fight the computer and the framerate. Overwatch is a dream right now and PvP in the Crew finally works.

I had a theory before in regards to PvP in the Crew. I did not notice it until Wild Run brought in the Summit PvP. In that everyone get the same car at the same level with the same parts. In short.. it is all about the driving (in theory) but i kept falling behind in every race. Not skipping or rubber-banding, just going slowly. I had my suspicions about why but now it is confirmed. I´l actually start recording some nice PvP action to show of my not so stellar driving skills.

Beyond that i have just had a blast going back through the old library and see what this new rig does to the games i have. Also making plans to pick up a few new ones like Watchdogs 2 and Titanfall 2. But for now i am just enjoying buttery smooth gameplay.

Anyway... That will be it i think. Apart from the upcoming quick look at Rogue One  sometime after Christmas i have no solid plans on content right now. Will do a top ten and retrospect around new years and sort of looking forward. 

As always, be kind and stay safe. 

/T

It felt fittingly random. Hetty for president. 

Misplaced stories and what to do with them. (Fantastic Beasts spoilers)

First off…

Spoilers ahead…

You have been warned…

So in my Fantastic beasts review I mentioned that there were some minor scenes that felt out of place… .. . These where any scene that contained the unmasked Gellert Grindelwald aka Graves. They literally bookend the story and have no impact at all. This is very much a done story being shoehorned in to a multi movie narrative. Now before someone says to them self “that filthy muggler has no clue of how important Grindelwald is to the story” This is partially true, it has been close to 10 years since I read the last in the core series and have not really revisited them since. Sure I did watch all the movies but they never stuck. So in many ways I had but the vaguest grasp of Grindelwald going in to this movie, add to that my active avoidance of spoilers and previews. I was as close to a blank state as I have ever been going in to a franchise movie. (compare with my encyclopedic knowledge of Marvel and DC lore that have me going in to any such movie with more knowledge than I care to think about.) So I did not really care about the opening scene and once the end scene comes rolling around it was more of a… dafuk… But I am aware of the importance of Grindelwald, I was just expecting them to push that in to the next movie.

And this is where my main gripe comes in, I think the people making the movie had the same idea until some focus group came in and had their say. The scenes with Grindelwald are sloppy and pointless. They serve no purpose at all in my mind and while I get that people new to the franchise need some anchoring for this character seeing how it is obscure to say the least, and that trying to launch an entire movie series built on him would be risky. They did not have to be so bleeding lazy about it.

I still love the movie that sits between these bookends and I think that a movie about Grindelwald will be interesting especially if they perhaps play up the by fans suggested romance between Grindelwald and Dumbledore. Mostly because it would explain a few things about ol´ Albus. It just pokes me the wrong way that this was the way we got introduced to the character.

It was also fun to see Ezra Miller seeing how he is the new Flash, trying to fill the place that Grant Gustin have in my heart… 

So YouTube did a thing... again... Angry people ensued.

So…. We are at the point again where we need to talk internet…. I tell you to chill the fuck down but you refuse. I am not sure what to do with you…

This is how i view the internet, thank you South Park.

Now this time around it is a bunch of people getting angry over YouTube… And don´t get me wrong, there are plenty of things to get angry with over YouTube. But in this case it is mostly just a matter of piss poor communication. You see the lifeblood of YouTube is and will most likely always be ad revenue… Heck that is what keeps it free and fairly unregulated. Well it turns out that those people paying money to Google want to have a say in what type of content their product is the opening act to. YouTube have starting to remove the ability to earn money of videos that does not follow a set of vague and fairly puritanical rules.

This is nothing new, it is in fact about as old as marketing itself, after all you do not try to market Jack Daniels to five year olds and if you have positioned yourself as the beacon of family values, you are not going to want to see your ads running before a clip of a person cursing like a sailor while smoking something best left in the Shire and pounding back Absinth… No matter how often this person sings “let it go”. This is just a fact of life. The fact that YT did not give people a decent heads up is them being arseholes but that should not be news to people trying to make a living on YT. It is more or less a drinking game at this point what will be the next dick move.

So… Here is where things take a sharp left out in to cray-cray land. A bunch of firebrands started to call this censorship… Now keep in mind no videos have been removed (as part of this issue… Fair use and the insane claim system is a very different issue.) only the ability to make money should YT deem a video to be “bad”. Now one could say that it is a way to starve out the unwanted ones and only keep the loyal dogs fed but in reality YT have been staring all the dogs for years. Shortly thereafter came the usual idiosyncrasy about free speech… At that point I simply zoned out.

So who is this impacting in reality… Well most YT channels make little to no money from ad revenue anyway. Most big ones supplement the income with sponsors and donations. So having a few videos every now and then get flagged will not matter, no this will only really hit home with channels built on abuse and being shitty human beings. My sympathy for these people are less than zero.

Now it is sad to see that YT keep up this system of communication so poor it make the IKEA building instructions look clear as day… And it is really bad that they simply did not enforce their rules sooner, setting precedence for what was ok and that was not. After all if you stick your dick in a wall socket and nothing happens because the power was off, you might get the incorrect ideas that it is a harmless thing to do.

But toasty genitalia aside, I fail to see that people would be willing to actually pay to keep YT open, just look at the angry words that people tossed around regarding YT RED. So if we like to keep our free entertainment channel… well free. We will have to accept that the people who actually pay have some input, just like in the “real” world. 

Any way 

Stay safe and have a great week. 

Box over box over Overwatch

So a bunch of people are angry at Blizzard.. again....

And i guess it is kind of justified this time. You see Blizzard have taken the whole Loot Box scheme they have to a new level. Usually you get "gold" that you can use to buy any stuff you do not win form the boxes.

But for the Olympics Blizzard have a new box, with some new skins, sprays, victory poses and stuff. You get these as usual when you level up but here is the kicker. The event is just three weeks long and then the box goes in to the vault until next summer (potentially) and seeing as there is one hundred-ish new items one could understand that people get antsy.

Especially as you can ofc also buy these boxes for the regular price.

Now as someone who have done the seasonal grinds in WoW... I´d gladly pay to be able to get around that. But now for kicker number two. remember how I mentioned that you can use gold to unlock stuff... Not this time... The seasonal items can only be won by the grace of RNGsus.

This last detail is what I guess pushed the most vocal people over the edge as these are generally the same people that invest the most money in the game and by that token have the most "gold" to spend. NOw all that gold have to sit pretty until the next hero is released.

This is of course a calculated move by Blizzard, had people been able to use the gold it would have made a deep cut in to the number of boxes bought. Cynical as it might seem, Blizzard is not anyone's pal... bro... BFF... They are in the habit of trying to make money. You do not make money by giving away all your stuff for free. It would be the morally right choice seeing as we paid full price for the game (but on the flip side... Artist have to eat too., =P )

Now full disclosure, i bought five boxes and i was lucky enough to get exactly what i was looking for. The Torbjörn "IKEA" (in reality called Tre Kronor) skin. So for me the minimal investment i have made compared to the amount of enjoyment i get from using that skin is not even measurable. But i can understand that some people spent a lot and did not get what they wanted and the lack of an option to buy it via the "gold" store just pile on to that frustration. It also i would guess hurts that a new player starting now  or a low level player will have a way easier time to get the new stuff as the XP needed to level up is a lot less before level 20 i think.

Any way, me personally i can not give a flying fuck about any feathers this have ruffled or any slippery slopes people say this is the start of. Sure it is cynical and very much a sign of the times but at the same time i get quality entertainment for pretty much peanuts.

If this is a deal breaker for you, by all means quit and hit up your bank for a charge back... Me i am going to play a short hairy man from Gothenburg dressed as if he feel asleep at a IKEA company Christmas party.

//Peace

Twice burnt... Justice League SDCC trailer

Warner Brother know how to cut a trailer... That much we should all agree upon. Both Man of Steel and BvS had trailers that got me hyped, So does Suicide Squad... And now we have the trailer for Justice League(and Wonder Woman). 

And i am... Well... really really hyped. With out a doubt the trailer at least have all that i wanted, sharp humor, great sets and Ezra Miller, sure he is no Grant Gustin but it seems they are taking the Flash character in a good direction and Ezra is the a perfect fit for that direction. 

But

As the title hints at i have twice given the WB/DC producers my vote of confidence and twice they have gone out of their way to stick their dick in a wall-socket. I wish i could just give in to the hype and just completely immerse myself in the world. But i honestly fucking hate BvS, i somewhat dislikes Man of Steel but it did have some promise. Sadly that was not delivered upon in BvS. In fact both movies suffer greatly from sloppy editing, and sloppy here should be read as them having cut away too many small movements that set up the greater arcs. This in turn leave the movies annoying and confusing... Not City of bones confusing but way more confusing than i care for. 

So against better knowledge i am hyped for the Justice league movie... But i am also preparing to be disappointed. 

That is why my next movie going experince is one i know what i will get... A really stupid popcorn action comedy... In short.. Ghostbusters. 

So until next time. Stay safe and play nice. 

First Ghostbuster numbers are in and i have started to watch NCIS:LA

Let me start off with that the early reviews of the new Ghostbusters movie are looking good, sure it seems that it went the road of Star Wars and played it a bit too safe. But to be fair the movie is 30 years old and never had the pop-culture presence that Star Wars had. Now I have stayed away from plot reviews and you can bet your arse on me doing a full review once I go see it. But for now things are looking good and I can´t help but feel a tiny bit smug. 

And now back to your regular scheduled programming.

So having some free time I decided to finally dive in to NCIS: Los Angeles. Having been a fan of the earlier seasons if NCIS and that this series dropped any pretense on being based in reality, it pretty much fixed all the things that annoyed me with the original one. Now the show itself is pretty much what you expect from a crime drama/action show. But what makes me appreciate it is how well it deals with humor, especially the character of Hetty. Hetty is the operational manager (aka big boss) and is played by the amazing Linda Hunt. Now Linda Hunt is a short woman and the series use this to the max by not only playing with our established idea of power and the attributes tied in to it. The writers also elegantly weave jokes about the fact that she is short in to the story in such a way that it empowers and even humanize the character. This is sadly an uncommon occurrence in modern day TV. Way to often I see writers lean on broad stereotypes and go for the simple laughs. As an overweight person myself, I belong to a group that way too often see this treatment. In general overweight males end up in one of three groups. The creep, the looser or most often… the punchline.

 

So to see a show that actually use a none normative character, putting a female with a look and stature that would normally exclude her from playing powerful roles as not only a strong lead but also write her as someone who has seen it all and have favors to call in from pretty much everyone. It is refreshing. Now I am only in season two (of eight) at this point so it might change but if so, at least they did it. We need more thinking like that. Breaking down the typical image of how things are “supposed” to be. Because stagnation is not good for anything. 

This is perhaps the biggest responsibility we have as a generation. We are now moving in to power and society has never been more open. We hold the keys to forming a new order of things. Don´t believe the knuckledraggers who try to paint equality and acceptance as something negative and dangerous. Don´t buy in to the idea that the goal is precis and absolute balance and thus an impossible goal.  It is about giving everybody the same basic chance and not provide a fast lane just because the person have dick. There will always be way to buy in to a fast lane, sail a gravy boat up the river privilege. But how about we try to widen that lane.

Also for the fucking love of all that is holy…..

STOP… HURTING… PEOPLE… JUST… BECAUSE… YOU… DO… NOT… AGREE… WITH… THEIR… LIFE… AND… CHOICE.

Who someone is and what they do should not be a concern of you as long as they are not hurting anyone. I know it is easy to fall back on threats and false bravado when faced with something that if different. Heck I do it myself sometimes, for an example I have at points wished bodily harm on people like the core of Westborough Baptist church and other right wing conservatives. But then I remind myself that abuse is the only language they speak and it would have no effect. Violence does not solve anything, not really.

Ok that became a bit political… but hey fuck it… this is my blog and if you do not like it you can write a comment and tell me so. We do after all live in a free world. 

So... Brexit. (and a midsummer greeting)

And this is what happen when you put your faith in the general masses. You end up with a coin toss that splits the nation and leaves nobody satisfied. 

I guess the Cameron office felt it was political suicide to put in a clause that a clear majority was needed... Instead betting on people to do what is best for business. Somehow forgetting that a big chunk the voters are to young to remember a world before the EU but for sure remembering how things have pretty much been shit since... EU making a good scapegoat. The other half balls deep in nostalgia for "how much better the days gone past where". 

That was... Stupid. Especially as it ended up costing the Cameron office their office anyway. 

So... Go forth and conquer I guess. Let´s hope that our own SEK manages to stay afloat.. making those UK vacations a lot cheaper. Also i am looking forward to seeing where this leads since this is a unprecedented scenario. GG on the old commonwealth for taking one for the team i guess. 

Anyway...

Swedish midsummer time so drink smart, fuck safe and do fucking try to not kill each other.

#WheresRey they say.

Toys are serious business and i agree that toys marketed to a specific gender is a horrid idea to begin with. But the issue that has have been sweeping the western world is why Rey have been underrepresented or even nonexsistant in the market. Disney and Hasbro say it was to avoid spoilers and thus pushed the Finn character as the main one for the movie. Now understanding that a toy can take about a year if not more from design to production the fear of spoilers is real for Disney. So it makes sense to tuck away the big plot points. If anything the fact that Disney felt that Rey was such a big impact point tells us a lot about how they view the Star Wars franchise. No longer has a boys club it is now opened to all.

But ofc it got spun all out of proportion, the “press” made it out like there are no toys at all, and I agree she is missing form some collections and was missing from the Monopoly. Now I have some limited insight in to these sort of things, being a big toy geek myself and I have no problem accepting the idea that spoilers forced Disney/Hasbro to act like they did… After all Rey has at least 9 different toys including two Lego sets and her own Infinity figure. There is also another one coming based on her outfit by the end of the movie (this also lends substance to the “no spoiler” theory)

Now with all that said we do have a big litmus-test for this theory coming up on the 13-16 February when the New York Toy Fair happens. If Hasbro and company shows off new Rey toys we know they did in fact tell the truth. Simply because there is no way they could have whipped them up in the time from the outbreak to now

Now I agree that we still have some way to go when it comes to toys, but I feel this thing got blown out of proportion by people who as usual had no insight in to the process and just reacted with their gut cheered on by “journalists” and bloggers trying to score some quick hits.  Combine this with the usual short packing and retailers stuck in their old ways and you have something of a clusterfuck.

Now my bet is that we will see a lot more Rey toys (and perhaps even some Black Widow ones) going forward, and should I be wrong. Feel free to tell me so. 

I run with The Crew again.

So as some people know the Crew from Ubisoft have been released and despite losing out on some sweet pre-order loot (who can say no to free cars in a car game) I did not do the whole dance and song of buying a game sight unseen. Especially as my experience during the beta was less than stellar in the driving department and lacked some serious online presence… Not very good thing for an online racing game… Add to that the whole embargo on reviews until the game was released and it was pretty much impossible for me to dip before.

But at its core the game was still fun and the PC beta was some good months before release. Much did happen. Especially the improvements to the early cars and how they handle. So I picked it up as my early Christmas gift to myself (ain´t being adult grand) and have sunk a few hours, getting myself up to level ten and finding my first hidden car. Now the game still lack a bunch in the online department and calling it a MMO is using the widest definition of the term as it is very limited in the amount of people you can see and interact with. It also have bugs… But what the fuck does not these days so I am not going to bother with that. If they are not fixed in a month I might consider climbing the barricade.

 

still very much carporn

Now most of what I said in my preview post  about The Crew still stands, the game is still very nice looking and the relaxed feeling of taking your favorite car on a cross country trip with no other goal then to drive is... relaxing and well perhaps not fun in the traditional sense but it give you a sense of freedom that few other racing games do. It is also very fun in its blatant disregard for realism and well often laws of physics. Taking your car and parking it at the top of Pikes Peak… Taking in the scenery… And then put the pedal to the medal down the Cliffside with no other goal then to see how fast you get to the bottom if liberating. The music range from great to passable depending on your taste in music buuut on does miss the talk shows from the GTA series. A minor nitpick in the grand scheme of things.

Now the game is not without flaws, the controls are still a bit squirrely and it is easy to overcorrect. Also this game is a console port… Do not event think of trying to play the game without at least a controller. It is simply not doable in my opinion. The content is also a problem, as varied as it is both in task and difficulty… It gets old fast. Now this is not much the games fault, it is a competent arcade racer and had it not tried to be something more I would not even bring it up here. But with the overarching goal of being a MMO of some type it would have needed something more, maybe some more wacky or instanced “cinematic“ sets?

Then it is the “story”… The legacy the games carry from more traditional racers. Not only are we hard locked in to the whitest dude since sliced toast. Thik what would happen if Freeman from Half-Life had a lovechild with Walter White from Breaking Bad… Now feed that child a steady diet of the Fast n Furious… Presto… It is so predictable I expect Michelle Rodrigues to pop up and try to screw me over. But I guess it does a passable to job to explain what could have been done with a normal tutorial. This does sort of lead me to the in my mind biggest flaw.

Customization.

Not only can you not change who you “are”… Because no matter how muc I like to I am not going to see myself as a car… I leave the up to Pixar.  But the car itself seriously lack in the customization department. Certain looks are tied to the games “class” system and other are simply not there for one arbitrary reason or other such as some paints and decals. For a game that says the car will be a reflection of me… They lock a good amount behind weird walls, I can understand that my dune racer need beefier suspension and wheels… but why not let me go a bit crazy with what I put on it...? The cynic in me say that it is because they need to put something in the cash shop.

Now one nice thing was that if one have 100 UPlay points you get a free Dodge Viper... that unlike 99% of Dodge Vipers in games do not suck. It is actually really fun. But the down side is ofc that you need UPlay to play the game. Ubisofts own little game platform still need some love and is not the most efficient snippet of code. But it is getting better.

So to sum things up. Ubisoft do have a really good core with The Crew but now it is up to task if they manages to keep the game updated on a regular basis and can keep the content flowing. If not this will be a very sad and short-lived attempt by Ubisoft to muscle in on the online scene.