The Returned – Episode 1 & 2

Be aware, this is not exactly a review but there is lots of spoilers. I’m doing a braindump about what I thought about the show so I can get it off my mind.

On a whim I decided to watch the Returned, Netflix’s new show about the dead coming back to life. And it’s, uh, uneven… It’s like there is multiple writers doing the different sub-plots and only one of them knows what he is doing.

At first I was terribly wary, the concept is cool but requires a really talented writer to do justice, the loss off a loved one is heavy stuff to say the least. And well, the first major sub-plot about the little girl who was supposed to die in a bus-crash is amazingly written. The scene where she gets home and just does her usual routine was great, the mother just staring, not sure how to handle to situation. We got to see how her death had made both her father and sister trying to hide their sorrow by drinking lots of booze, though in different ways. The scene when Camille finally saw her grown-up sister was fucked up in just the right way. Good acting, good writing, just excellent all-around. 9/10 at least, if the rest of the show was this good it’d be a goddamn home-run.

But sadly the rest is okay to boring as fuck.

The mysterious little boy can go die in a fire, I already hate the asshole. I am very prone to feeling sympathetic to children but this dipshit gets on my nerves. He refuses to talk (he can, he just refuses) yet gets all huggy so the good doctor feels she has to take care of him. That he was there when the bus crashed is some anime-bullshit, hell, the writers of Naruto would probably be ashamed if they pulled something as lame as that. Maybe there’s a good explanation but I don’t know if I care, the whole subplot is just a cavalcade of bland nobodies…

Simon and Rowan was alright I guess, it pulled at all the heart-strings but maybe the actors just aren’t good enough because I don’t care about any of them. Boo-hoo, the child is his, the police she’s getting married to has him in custody and she thinks he’s a ghost! The last part was actually pretty nicely done if a bit silly, but I still don’t care.

And lastly there’s another mysterious person, some sort of magical serial-killer who bites his victims. So fucking stupid I almost rolled my eyes at the TV.

Oh yeah, there was also some old guy who saw his dead wife and decided to jump from a bridge. That was non-nonsensical as hell, but it seems to be the shows style.

I might keep watching this just because I like Camille’s story, they’re all interesting characters who seems to have depth and the actors are good, (Bit weird with Paul from Dexter though, especially since he has the same haircut) but the rest is a fucking mess. It’s not about me wanting answers, I’m not the kind of guy who needs an explanation for everything I see on the screen. It actually does a good job of show, don’t tell with the exception of Rowans little speech at the library. It’s just that the mysteries are silly. The little boy would have deserved to get run over by that bus and the serial-killer is just goddamn stupid with his whispering and circle-shaped carvings. Nothing makes me go: “Oooh, this is exciting, I wonder how it will all work out!” Instead I’m sitting here 4 o clock in the morning typing about how irritated I am by the wasted potential. They have one amazing sub-plot so why are the rest so shitty!?

Honestly, if you actually read through that I’m gonna recommend you to watch The 4400 instead. It has a sort of similar premise with people returning after they were presumed dead. It starts out really awkward but grows into something quite great albeit completely different from the Returned. Watch that instead!

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Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate is AWESOME (Review)

The title says it all so I’ll first talk a bit about the third generation of Monster Hunter games.

((  Monster Hunter Tri is quite frankly the worst installment in the series. They re-introduced mandatory egg-quests and did less interesting re-imaginings of the old monsters as well as making Rathalos more frustrating than the original Azure Rathalos, which is quite a feat.
Not only that, they even removed weapons. Dual Blades, Gunlance and Bow specifically. And finally, underwater fights. While a cool concept, it was awful in practice. Monster Hunter is all about range and positioning, you always need to know where you are in relation to the monster and what attacks will connect. Well, that is a major bitch underwater so it always ended with your head touching the wyverns belly while madly swinging your weapon around. Hyperbole aside, underwater combat fucking sucked. Uragaan fuckings sucks, Gigginox is ridiculous, Barioth is the shittiest Tigrex-clone and they had an underwater Lao-Shan Lung. They also introduced the Aoshira-family, the easiest boss-monsters in the whole franchise. Honestly, the game is also by far the easiest, partly due to nerfing the monsters screams so hard Ear-Plugs was suddenly useless. The screams were just a bother and the skill went from mandatory for a lot of weapons to a pseudo-offensive skill for weapons that needs big combos (Longsword in particular)
All in all, Monster Hunter Tri was a clear step backwards for the franchise, when my brother asked if he should get it I flatly told him no. I’m a Monster Hunter fanatic, I’ve probably played the games over 2000 hours (I don’t keep count) and I told my brother he shouldn’t buy  a Monster Hunter game when he was clearly interested in it. You dun goofed Capcom.

Monster Hunter Portable Third (MHP3) was a cautious return to form. All the weapons were around, they re-introduced a ton of enemies and added a few more  (Jinouga is pretty cool for one) but overall it wasn’t much of a sequel either. MHP3 is just more of the same and is sadly also a lot easier than MH Freedom Unite. There weren’t that many weapons either, some weapon types even lacked certain elements. I liked it and I played it to completion (beating Amatsugamatsuchi) but I didn’t stay around to farm and beat all the missions.  ))

Now for Monster Hunter 4.

MH4U have taken all the best parts of the earlier installments (Khezu is back, Gravios is back, Rajang is back and apparently buffed!!!) and expanded on everything. The monsters deal a ton of damage again, there are two new sweet weapon types and you can do jump attacks!
I love jump attacks! When I play with Insect Glaive I do pole-jumps just for the hell of it, when I don’t I use a Launcher Palico so I can do more jump attacks! Did you know Hammers can use their charge with jump attacks? It’s awesome!

My point is that MH4U is fun fun fun! Like I said, the game is still a lot harder than Tri/3/whatever but they’ve managed to inject a huge amount of almost childlike glee. Monkeys get stuck with their butt upside down, you can rescue piglets with a fishing pole, your cat pals are INSANE, pulling out jet-packs and small tanks and in the middle of it all is you jumping down a mountain with a huge sword clad in woolly clothes and a bunny hood!
Monster Hunter has always been silly, at least 2 and forward but now they’ve embraced it fully. And it’s glorious!

On the customization side they’ve even added a function to trade materials from monsters not in the game just so they could add more weapons and armors. In other words there is more stuff than ever to make in all categories. There is also an absolute ton of quests to do and they’ve even added a kind of storyline (A pretty lame story obviously but a fun addition) that’s an excuse to have multiple towns with layers and layers of stuff to unlock. They’ve also improved the arena fights and added online scoreboards.

Last but certainly not least is the fact that there is an incredible amount of monsters around. They’ve decided they love reskins (I love them too, it means more weapons/armours and a working excuse to put the monster in an entirely different area.) but not counting that I know of at least five entirely new monsters and I haven’t even reached the elder dragons. Hell, I haven’t seen a Dablos yet and I’m almost done with solo high-rank, or am I…? There is apparently a total of 75 boss monsters around, beating Unites previous record of 58 quite handily. Tell me of any other game where there is 75 bosses with different attacks and weaknesses. Granted, there’s a lot of reskins but that should still mean about 40-50 bosses with wholly different attack patterns.

Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate is quite simply the best Monster Hunter game made to date and I’ll play it til my 3DS breaks down and then I’ll buy a new 3DS to play until Monster Hunter 5 rolls around in 2018 or something…

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Talking about MH4U Demo

First off, it is fucking amazing! You can jump into the air while charging with a lance and stab things while descending! You can do a short charge followed with a shot with gunlance, hell you can shell in the air! And while Insect Glaive is wonky as fuck to get into with its flashy moves and often sub-par range, Switchblade is great from the go. Hell I like Insect Glaive too, I just need more training with it.

The demo is however seriously easy. I had more problems initially with Tetsucabra than with Gore Magala and the latters name just screams “HARDCORE!” When I loaded it up the game told me – “You crazy fool, why are you fighting Gore Magala? Good luck young’un, you’ll need it!” And I beat it on my first try. Its attacks are telegraphed from a mile away, even when it goes into fury mode it’s not that hard to dodge. Granted, it deals a hell of a lot of damage but ol’ Tigrex in MHFUnite is both faster and harder. Hell, Blangonga is faster than this guy and isn’t much easier.

I suppose my point is that MHF3 was way too easy and I’ve been hoping they’re toughening the game back up again. Devil-Jo was a bit of a bitch but nowhere near Rajang and all the new monsters are gemerella just easier versions of their older counterparts. Uragaan is easy, Agnaktor is just annoying, Jinouga is way too easy once you learn his moves (i.e the second time you play him) and so on. I couldn’t quite get into MHF3 because the game never went “Oh fuck you!” and just steamrolled me. Ucamulbas took me five-six tries to just beat once and Rajang meant 20-30 minutes of complete concentration every time. I mean yeah, I learned him but he was still hard. That green balloon monster I don’t remember the name of had a attack that one-shotted you if weren’t careful. I played with the Guts skill because I was lazy like that but it was cool. They even took away the scream-combos so earplugs went from almost mandatory to a bit of a waste. I’m rambling now but I’m repeating my point here, MH3 and its variations was way too easy and I’m really hoping 4 will be hard-as-nails again. Sadly Gore Magala is indication of continued pussification. Argh, I want Monster Hunter to make Dark Souls look easy by comparison, now it’s almost the other way around.

But again, the demo was amazing and I am so looking forward to the full game. It will be great and I will have a ton of fun, sadly the game probably won’t skullfuck me and throw my corpse over a cliff. :(

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Dragon Age: Inquisition – Sera is dreadfully boring

So far I love this game, the best parts being the trademark Bioware banter and the fun choices. Sera however, is probably the least fun part of the entire game, save perhaps for collecting letters in the Exalted Plains. Her entire personality seems to be built around being quirky and random, a manic pixie dream girl on ecstacy. Somewhere else on the internet some guy thought she’s the comic relief among a bunch of grumpys, only every single character engages in witty banter and one-liners. Sera is the girl screaming “POOP!” at the top of her lungs at random intervals, desperately hoping someone think its funny. But please, shut the fuck up Sera, you have the wit of a drunken teenager.
If you need proof, visit any chat in a MMO, there will be teenagers trying to be funny by saying “weird”, unexpected things, sometimes in all-caps. Yes Sera, you stole pants, hilarious.
People claim she’s freakin amazing in combat but every single time she opens her mouth my brain cringes, her attempts of humor the ecquivalent of pouring lemon juice on my synapses.
“You’re no fun!” she tells Solas after another of her random buzzword jokes. Well neither are you Sera, shut the fuck up.

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The big Mass Effect post

It’s five o clock in the morning and I can’t sleep because I forgot to take my medicine which means my brain is full of useless ideas waiting to get out. I have over the years thought A LOT about the Mass Effect trilogy and this is some sort of not terribly condensed version of all these thoughts. The spark came from the fact that Mass Effect 1 is often the only game that gets on any lists despite me thinking it’s beyond its stellar writing a rather mediocre game.

First off, mechanics? Mass Effect 1 was pretty much Bioware doing their own Knights of the Old Republic. The combat is some sort of compromise between a third person shooter and a strategy-RPG and it’s kind of terrible. The AI for instance is absolutely awful with enemies running around the carbon-copied cargo-rooms like headless chickens. People complain about the cut-and-paste areas in Dragon Age II and here it’s equally bad, if not worse. But the AI. I’ve had enemies run straight towards me and my teammates in a narrow corridor, spraying like a maniac without hitting anyone and then running back behind some boxes while screaming at the top of his lungs (be darned if I can remember what they were shouting). Like the mechanics the AI is not quite that of an action game and not quite a strategy game, just a confusing amalgamation of the two genres.
The weapon balance is also off, as a handgun with Marksmanship is by far the best choice. First off, ss there’s no ammo clips Marksmanship lets you spray non-stop with great accuracy and damage. Add Adrenaline Rush and you can do it for longer than most fights last, every fight.
I have tried other weapons, playing through the game twice as different classes and trying a third but I’ll be damned if I do it again, I always have to take long breaks to stand the monotony. As in weeks-long breaks.
You see, pretty much every fight is fought the same. As your skills have such long cooldowns yet aren’t that powerful it comes down to you taking everything down with your own gun, and it’s just not a good shooter. During my two full playthroughs, one of them on the highest difficulty every goddamn fight could be beaten by using your abilities in the roughly same order and then shooting everything. Alright, slight exaggeration there but I almost fall asleep playing the damn game.
And don’t get me started on the car you’re fooling around with, or the inventory for that matter. *shudders*
Mass Effect 1 was mechanics-wise a decent first try at something new but combat is simple and repetitive and the AI is retarded.

On the other hand, the writing is top of the line. Unlike 2’s unexistent one and 3’s bad one ME1 has a pretty good story. The rogue special agent, the bickering politicians and omnipotent alien intelligence not to mention the great characters all makes for a great ride. Experiencing ME1 is simply a treat, it’s just too bad there’s all this fighting between the cut-scenes.
The characters, like I implied, are classics. Everyone loves Garrus, a lot like Wrex and I heard some like Liara. Not sure why though, maybe she was more interesting back here. Asaris are androgynous elves, which I might understand the appeal of but please, big yawn at Asaris. Tali on the other hand, great stuff, just like Ashley. I know Ashley is a racist redneck but she’s certainly a sympathetic one. There’s also this human guy but they forgot to give him a personality so whatever.
This bring me to the races and the whole setting. I’m really looking forward to Mass Effect 4, for me the series has always been about the great setting Bioware has created and not about Shepard saving the galaxy. I LOVE the Krogans and Quarians, I really like the Turians, Geth and the Salarians and most certrainly the Rachni. The Hanar are cool I guess while the Volus are a bit too much “Greedy dwarfs” for me. There’s also of course Vorcha, Reapers, Collectors and Batarians, all with their own quirks.
The only issue is of course that all the species have one cultural trait. Humanity have countless cultures yet the Volus are all moneypinchers and pretty much all the Krogans are warmongers. Thankfully individual characters are treated like individuals which is what saves the game (big time) from being a big pile of stereotypes.
The game is simply well-written in pretty much all ways and had I just rated it by that it could have gotten a goddamn ten, but as everything else is mediocre at best no dice.
If you want more examples look no further than side-questing. The quests are “Go to planet X, enter base somewhere on the surface and kill everything inside. Turn in quest.” Or the aforementioned inventory that you at times have to spend half an hour to sort and clean up (The sidequests doesn’t improve that much but at least the improved combat makes it fun). Or all the loading times. Or the fact that roleplaying is mechanically useless as you have to go all Renegade (Whiny bitch) or all Paragon (Self-righteous prick) to be able to do the hardest dialogue checks late in the game? This glaring flaw persists through the whole series and pisses me off to no end.
All in all, it gets a 7/10.

Mass Effect 2;
The more I think about this game the more I believe it was a stroke of luck. The highest difficulty is perfectly balanced and turns the game into a borderline puzzle-game where every fight has to be solved by using the right skills in the right order.
Because combat just went from bland to absolutely amazing with skills taking the front row instead of just supporting your guns. You can use them often, yet they share cooldowns which means you have to prioritise. On Insanity all enemies have a level of Shield, Barrier or Armor which means you need to bring the right characters for the job instead of just sticking with Grunt and hoping he shotgun-charges everything to death. And it is tough as nails yet I never feel its unfair (Unlike Mass Effect 3 or goddamn Dragon Age 2, the latter having one of the most badly balanced Hard Plus-difficulties). The classes are also a lot more unique and building your characters certainly is more interesting when every point actually does something instead of just being a minor buff to a mediocre skill. Might be exaggerating here again but really, combat in the first and second part of the trilogy is just miles from each other. Better AI, decent cover-mechanics, a much quicker pace and flawless balance. Goddamn flawless balance. I’m a challenge-junkie, there are few games I do not crank up on the highest difficulty out of general principle and ME2 is a game I can play over and over with different classes and builds just to muck around with the mechanics. They are great and are again, perfectly balanced against the opposition. It is by far the most well-designed game Bioware has ever made and most likely will ever make. Just look at Mass Effect 3 where balance is out the window again. There’s no rhyme or reason with the weapons while in ME2 every weapon have its own niche. There’s usually a slow weapon with big damage, one with high rate of fire and one inbetween. And it’s perfect. You don’t need to be able to upgrade every goddamn weapon, certainly not when more than half serve no use whatsoever.
And I mean, even the environments are well-balanced, usually contained to smaller rooms where you’re advancing inch by inch while trying to reach a goal of some kind. Every fight on Insanity is a riddle with multiple answers, and it’s fucking beautiful.

Also, all my favourite characters from the trilogy are here. Mordin is my big fave followed by Grunt and Thane. Tali is here as well as your BFF Garrus. Jack is a bit of a goth but she’s a cool character as well, certainly initially. The Bioware curse though is ever-present, they have no idea how to write interesting humans. Miranda is a frigid bitch-queen and Jakob is, a straight soldier…, guy, I guess? He’s almost as unintersting as that guy in ME1, the biotic one. *shrugs*
The Illusive man is alright though he turns into a psychotic imbecile in ME3, which is just a fucking shame because they had somethig with him. A believable big bad. But yeah, ruined him.
What I’m saying is that except for the completely unexisting story the writing is again amazing. It’s quotable as hell and some of the personal scenes I count as fond memories (like when Mordin does his song-routine). Also, I forgot Samara and her 1000 year old moody teenager. Because son, Morinth is just laughable. If that’s their idea of a seductive predator I hope they never make a vampire game of any sort. Samara on the other hand is cool I guess, mainly because she represents an interesting part of Asari culture, an anomaly of sorts.
Mass Effect 2 is to me pretty much a perfect game. It has stellar writing, great and memorable characters and absolutely amazing mehcanics and balance. It’s easily in my top five games of all time.
10/10 obviously

Now Mass Effect 3 manages to fuck up pretty much everything they did right in ME2. While combat should be more fun balance is awful. Instead of letting the enemies have a lot of health and medium damage they lowered health and increased damage by a lot. So on the highest difficulty a grenade pretty much oneshots you. Add a turret and at times you’re dead because the game fucking says so. Snipers deal way too much damage as well, making fights against multiple snipers a chore since you’re spending more than half of your time behind cover. Add husks or any other melee enemy and it’s moving into unplayable territory. Still, you also deal more damage than ever and some abilities simply deal way too much damage for its low cooldown. In ME3 I pretty much stopped using guns as Liara with a Singularity spec is a tad bit too powerful not to abuse. I didn’t all the time but the game often forced me to as it threw waves of snipers and turret/grenading engineers at me. Mass Effect 3 is on insanity often way too easy and at times WAY too hard. They have again no idea how to balance the enemies against the arsenal, mostly because it’s too goddamn big. Some skills are so powerful they turn others useless instead of the various skills having different useages.
And while the writing is certainly impressive in scope, it’s often overwritten. There is no need for all the characters to have heartbreaking drama or every goddamn mission weighing the fate of the galaxy on its scales. It’s constantly trying to outdo itself and it gets boring. I stopped caring in ME3 and so the ending just left me with a big “meh”. The characters turns into stereotypes of themselves as they all have to get their time in the limelight. The playable rooster is smaller than ever yet I’ve never cared so little for them.
Mass Effect 3 tried to do everything at the same time, bigger and better than ever but instead it has the worst writing by a long shot and combat turned into a big, stupid mess.
Mass Effect 3 still wasn’t that disappointing for some reason. It’s your typical Bioware game really. Well-written with shoddy mechanics and a bit of hubris.
6/10

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Descent 2nd edition – Building your character

This post will talk about how I think when I create my characters posts. Picking the right skills for your character comes down to a lot of variables that only have to be taken in account if you’re a big nerd who wants to optimise.

Also, this post is pretty long and not edited in the slightest. It’s on the other hand pretty informative if you can read it through.

(After 1700 words I came up with a small rule of thumb.
The total stamina cost for your skills shouldn’t be higher than the number of skills you have and never higher than your total stamina.)

I’ve sometimes tried explaining to my players why a particular skill should or should not be bought on a character and seldom do they listen. They have their own way of thinking that I obviously disagree with, partly because players often just pick the skills that look cool. Of course this is fine but then they whine when I win a mission not realising that it could have come down to them picking a better tool for the job and not me being “lucky” with my draws and rolls.
I also obviously think a LOT more than the average player about this sort of thing as evidenced by this blog…

Anyway, you’ve beat First Blood and got your experience point. Should you buy a skill or save it up for a twopointer?
The short answer is; Buy a skill.
The long answer is that the game gets a lot harder at this point and victories often snowball the team into more victories. You’ll get more gold to buy better equipment which is mandatory against the tougher quests. If you lost First Blood for some reason and the OL is a dick and picks Castle Daerion then MAYBE save your experience since you’re most likely screwed anyway. The twopointers are occasionally amazing (like Whirlwind) which could help you turn it around but in most cases you should a one-pointer.

What about after A Fat Goblin or whatever you picked? In most cases you should instead save your experience for a two-pointer unless you’re opting for a specific build like Advance+Challenge or Concoction+Inky Substance.

Your first three-four experience is often the base of your build and should be tailored to your team and character. For example, having 5 Stamina means you’ll get a lot of mileage out of your rest actions and can use more skills. The heros stamina is often a lot more important than his speed. A measly 3 Stamina means you generally shouldn’t get skills that costs 2S to activate not to mention the ones that cost 3S.
In Descent you’re usually in some way in a big hurry. People spend a lot of stamina for movement points so they can rush to chokepoints or objectives. You’ll have to rest at times but you obviously want to do it as little as possible. So getting two skills that cost stamina for your first experience either means you’ll be resting a lot, never spend stamina on movement or not using your skills very often. All are bad but the third one is especially stupid, why buy the skill if you’re not able to use it consistently. While Counterattack looks a lot cooler than Brute, Brute won’t ever cost you a single point of stamina and will probably save the team actions since they’ll have to revive you less.
Blessed Strike is another example. While I can understand you wanting to help the team how often do you stand next to a monster and someone who is damaged while having a bit of damage as well as both stamina and an action to spare? Every turn? No way. You can probably pull it off every three turns meaning maybe two or three times per encounter. If you have a knight with defend it gets more better but then again, Armor of Faith beats it out in that case as well. Armor of Faith just boosts the skill you’re already pretty much every single turn without adding extra stamina expidenture or costing an action.

The basics of Descent is that you’re on a severe action Stamina-budget. If you don’t think you can use your skill at least every other turn, you probably shouldn’t buy it. If you have to rest every other turn just to keep using your skills, you probably bought the wrong ones.

The best skills are the ones that lets you save actions for low stamina. Advance is absolutely amazing since it’s a free movement and attack for 1S. Sure, you have to kill something for it but for 1 xp, doing this every other turn is a lot of free actions. Same with Exploding Rune, it saves you a buttload of attacks while forcing the OL to spread out his minions. Sneaky is extra damage and free actions, for no stamina. Sure, not all the time but again, it’s free.

Bad skills are generally ones that cost a lot of stamina and an action. Earthen Anguish and Corpse Blast are both awful in that you first have to spend an action and a stamina to enable you to use the skill and then another stamina and action for a slightly better Exploding Rune. Maybe you have time for this once per encounter since you also have to move away not to Blast yourself. The only upside to these skills is that the OL will focus down your summons so you won’t get move and blast the next round. On the other hand, resummoning your minions all the time is costly.

Generally the twos are the most cost-effective skills and most of the time you should buy two of them. With one or two 1’s and two 2’s you’re down 5-6 xp which means you’re now into act 2. You’re probably considering saving up for a 3. Is it worth it?
Short answer; Probably not.
Long answer; The threes are most of the time very specialised. They can’t be too good since then people will just skip the twos but again, they cost 3 xp so they should be impressive. The result is skills that are at times incredible but most of the time a big meh.
The Berserkers Death Rage and Execute are prime examples. Death Rage is great if you’re low on health, especially if you also bought Brute. This means you’re carrying objective tokens, otherwise the OL WILL ignore you. No Overlord should ever hit a Berserker with Death Rage unless he absolutely has to. It’s just stupid. So on the quests that don’t recquire a carrier the skill is shit. The final mission for example which is around the time you can afford it unless you rushed the skill and skipped Whirlwind (You should never do this).
Execute is on the other hand freaking expensive and only interesting against large minions. Against multiple smaller ones you have Whirlwind which when I think about it Execute stacks with. But again, Weapon Mastery is free and an extra Surge can mean two or three extra damage or a stamina-point.

For the Disciple, Radiant Light is the big ultimate but how often can you really use it? Three stamina for on average two damage and two points of healing. The overlords free will again makes it shit as this is mainly interesting against lots of smaller enemies like Goblin Archers and Spiders. If you buy Radiant Light he won’t pick smaller enemies anymore which I guess might be good but does in general make no difference.
Holy Power is instead free and improves your already existent skill that you’re using pretty much every turn.
There’s more examples of huge nukes that the overlord can simply plan around or skills like Vigor that expects you to constantly attack as a Spiritspeaker even though their offensive skills are really crappy. Unless a 3-pointer is essential for your build you should buy more one’s and two’s instead since they’re often a more costeffective and generalised.

You’re always on a budget in Descent. You only have two actions each turn and they have to be used optimally so buying skills you’ll only use once per encounter or even quest is always worse than buying ones with less impressive benefits that can be used often for a lower cost. It adds up. If your healer gets knocked out and you can’t clear the mobs around him because you bought freakin Death Rage the OL will probably get to knock out him again as soon as someone revives him. You can of course let him just lie there but that means two less actions per player round and having him stand up in the middle of a pack you can’t clear is just giving the OL free cards. Maybe the whole team has to go back and save him costing them a round or two meaning less search markers or a lost encounter which in turn means less gold, worse gear and more lost search markers, gold and in effect lost quests. Please, unless you want the OL to win the campaign don’t buy skills you can’t use. They might look cool on paper but then you roll a X on your Break The Rune and wonder why you didn’t get Iron Will instead.

Very short version of it all;
If you have 5 Stamina, skills for 2 or even 3 Stamina are playable but never get more than one.
If you have 4 Stamina, the same applies only it should probably be the only skill that costs stamina since you won’t be able to use others without resting all the time.
If you only have 3 stamina skills that cost more than 1 stamina to use are generally a big no-no since they in effect recquires a Rest action, a whole extra action just to make up for lost stamina.
At most you should buy three skills that cost stamina not counting your starting skill but it should never be all of your skills. Buy a one that costs a single stamina and maybe a two that costs one stamina but never say Quaking Word and Molten Fury. They might look incredibly fancy together but getting Stone Tongue or Ley Lines instead makes you more versatile and free.
The option is to not use your skills which is retarded.

So in conclusion, the total stamina cost for your skills shouldn’t be higher than the amount of skills you have and never higher than your total stamina.

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Dexter 8-6; Disappointment and bad casting

I’ve been a fan of Dexter since pretty much episode one. But then again, the first two seasons are still by far the best ones (I’m rewatching them for the sixth time or something). Now, I loved season seven and was really looking forward to the final season and the first five episodes were pretty good. There wasn’t much going on (which is something that’s been plaguing the show since season 3, more on that later) but it was certainly enjoyable.

On a related note I saw this fan-theory, namely that Dexter would teach the Hamilton kid the code and that the season would end with him killing Dexter. This was one of the worst ideas I could think of concerning Dexter. The reason being that the Hamilton boy is simply uninteresting. Dexter has had loads of interesting characters like Sergeant Doakes, Special agent Lundy, Miguel, the Trinity Killer and Hannah McKay. I call this the Quinn problem (I just called it that).
Quinn shows up in season 3 and it amazes me how much time they’ve spent exploring him without him becoming even a little interesting. One of his problem is that his sideplots rarely are relevant for Dexter and considering the shows name it’s ALWAYS filler. Quinn doesn’t add anything, he’s just sort of there and takes up screen time when the writers has no idea how to fill their 40 minutes. This might be because Desmond Harrington never makes him very likeable.
Zach Hamilton suffers from similar problems. He’s just a rich fucking douche and I do not give a single shit about him. There’s nothing about him that wakes your sympathy like with Dexter. The fact that we like Dexter even though he’s a serial killer is largely thanks to Michael C Hall. He’s simply charming as fuck. We love the Trinity Killer because John Lithgow is awesome as him and the only good thing about season 3 is Jimmy Smits a.k.a Miguel Prada. Sam Underwood (Zach Hamilton) simply doesn’t have the acting chops for taking the role as Dexters intern. He comes across as a rich douche and little else.
When they casted Will Graham in Hannibal they realised they needed someone who people could sympathize with, otherwise he’d just come across as an asshole. Hugh Dancy with his puppy eyes and mild manners fits perfectly. Imagine a young Ron Perlman as Dexter and you’d have an entirely different show. Yeah, the reason people like Sons of Anarchy is probably because Charlie Hunnam (Jackson) is likeable. If Hugh Laurie wasn’t such a funloving rascal House would never have become as big as it did. What I’m saying is that for such a huge role, they sure casted Zach Hamilton horribly. The only good thing about the last episode was that Hannah McKay finally makes her comeback. Yvonne Strahovski wipes the floor with the rest of the cast. Ugh, just kill the fucking Hamilton kid already.

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Inspiration and competence

To say that I love all music would be a lie, but I like all kinds of music as long as there’s something genuine about it. I’ve said before that as soon as a band starts making music to make money some of the magic is lost. The more people you try to reach the more diluted the result gets, like Two and Half Men or Friends, something pretty much everyone can relate to a little bit but seldom feels personal.
Great works of art is often born from inspiration, in pop-culture we have one-hit wonders, some anonymous artist who makes his one big hit and then disappears from the stage again because the rest of his or her work wasn’t up to par. But that one flash of inspiration created something magical, and some artists continue making great works of art after it, inspired from their first flash. They usually fade with the years though. On the other side of the spectrum we have competence and in music this gap can be miles wide.
Especially metal music has its share of people who create with function over form and Dream Theater is one of the worst offenders. The original is Rush who doesn’t let their musicianship stand in the way for creating art. They use their competence as a medium for their inspiration to channel it to even greater heights. Meanwhile the guitarist in Dream Theater, John Petrucci, is a guitar wanker of the highest order. They have loads of instrumental passages that seems to exist only for Petruccis amusement during live shows. Instead of making the listener feel something it just makes us go “Damn son!”. I can appreciate this sort of thing at times, just to be impressed by the sheer competence, but as art it falls flat.
(A literary ecquivalent might be George R R Martin. While a mighty fine writer it’s often immensely dry and feels more like reading a newspaper article than a story. On the other side of the spectrum we have Dan Brown and especially Stephanie Meyer who can’t write for shit but definitely got struck by inspiration.)
I’m not sure where I’m going with this anymore, maybe I’m just trying to justify my taste or something…
I guess the point is that inspiration without competence is shortlived and competence without inspiration is flat. I believe pretty much everyone prefers the former if they had to choose.

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Taste, experience and catharsis

For the longest time, as long as I’ve remembered in fact, I’ve found powerballads confusing and depressing. I did and I still do prefer darker kinds of art. Last year (and this is relevant) I read a book on esthetics and stumbled upon a theory saying that what we like is based on what evokes feelings in us, what makes us feel comfortable and calls up fond memories. The smell of newly cooked potatoes and carrots will forever remind me of my grandma and will most likely always be something that I’ll love.
How is this relevant to powerballads then? Well, I am one depressed motherfucker. I’m diagnosed with dysthymia and anxiety disorder, so songs about love and happiness generally makes me feel nothing or just makes me confused.
On the other hand, slow music tuned to E minor or lower makes me feel comfortable and less alone, the composer might not have felt so swell either.
This is why people get mad when you criticize their favourite song or movie, you’re attacking their memories or even the core of their personaility, probably without them even realising it.
But I said generally so that means some things even makes me feel happy. This connects to the idea of “good” art. Good art says something about being human, it tells us something that we all feel deep down. So less good art evokes the feeling in people who is used to the feeling in question while good art evokes it in everyone. Case in point is Bob Dylans album “Blond on blond”. Listening to it makes me feel all warm inside, a feeling I’m slightly uncomfortable with, but at least it’s there. It’s special and I would like to some day feel as good as he did when he wrote it.

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Fucking advertising bullshit

What’s up with these new automatic links to random sites? They frankly disgust me. While I know the blog is free not in any way am I trying to make any money off this site. That anyone else is pisses me off.
Also I am trying my best to have as clean a layout as possible. Few pictures, few links in the texts and just as little bullshit as possible beside the text. These ugly links screw up the layout. I suppose I should put aside some money and tell the advertisers to fuck off because damn, I do not endorse gambling and ukrainian bride sites.

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