日常生活

It's been a few months since we took on the behemoth that is Dungeons & Dragons. We finished off the starter-set campaign and I bought a few of the books and boxes from the Essentials line. We then started out on a new journey to save the land.

But we didn't get very far. The roleplaying aspect of D&D turned out to be a little rough on all of us; too much were said and not enough got done, so to speak. And we found the character sheets and spells a bit hard to read out. All of us enjoy a good fight, but it got more complicated than it probably had to.

And that's where the D&D board game Castle Ravenloft comes into the picture -- It is a slimmed down version of D&D with the main focus on exploring the dungeons (in this case a castle) and fighting monsters. What makes it great is that no one is locked down playing the DM (which would always be my peril); everyone gets to control the monsters they reveal, which in my opinion is ingenious. I like that a lot, because now I can be part of the group of adventurers instead of hiding behind a DM screen.

I got the game a few days ago and my brother and I have played a couple of rounds to test it out. We both enjoy it immensely and I think Castle Ravenloft will be the favourite among my games for a long time to come. :-)

I'm planning on buying the "sequel", Wrath of Ashardalon which was released mid-Februari, as well as The Legend of Drizzt due for release in October.

I'm late to the party as always -- I got FFXIII a little while back. So far I've played about 14 hours. A lot of people are complaining about the game, but I quite like it.

I'm not a huge FF-nerd; I haven't played a lot of the older games, like really played them. The only ones I can think of are FFIV, V and VI on the SNES. And I used an emulator. And I cheated...

Compared to the older games, FFXIII is very linear, or at least have been for most of my 14 hours. Some of the enviroments can get a little boring because of it, but so far, for the most of it, that hasn't been a huge problem. I actually kind of like knowing where I'm going for a change.

Another thing I like a lot compared to the older games is how when you die, instead of being returned to the title screen (which pisses me off to no end) you're prompted with a dialogue asking if you want to retry the battle. It brings you back to the very moment before engaging in the battle, meaning you can adjust your gear or spend Crystarium Points or whatever before attempting the fight again. Very nice.

It supposedly takes 50+ hours to beat the game. Knowing me - and I do know me - that's probably closer to 70+ hours... So far so good though. :)

Sometimes it feels like we don't have enough cards to play with. But then I remember all the cards we're no longer using in our decks and I die a little inside. There's plenty of them.. u__u

I feel some reluctance in buying new cards, even though I don't mind some new cards to play around with, using the word 'some' rather loosely. I've ordered a New Phyrexia fat pack and the Duel Decks 'Knights vs. Dragons'. They both look pretty neat. :-)

Edit May 19: Upon ripping open one of the nine booster that came with the fat pack I found Karn Liberated - a bloody Planeswalker! Pretty rad and oh so over-powered. (If you didn't know, I'm not a huge fan of Planeswalkers).

If that wasn't "bad" enough; when I opened the last booster I found yet another one. I mean, for real, what are the odds..? At first i was a little bummed that I didn't get a different Planeswalker at least, but then I found out he's the only one in the expansion...

My brother and I took the duel decks for a test drive and I started out with the Knights. His Dragons won... We swapped decks and tried anew; the Dragons won again. We concluded that the Knights are inferior. Or we're just lousy shufflers...

I recently started watching NCIS, which supposedly is America's favourite TV show. I don't watch a whole lot of TV, but the Yank's got this one right; NCIS is really good.

I mean really, really good. I really like the chemistry between the characters. Gibbs is a really cool but mysterious "father figure", the fights between "brother and sister" Tony and Kate are fun to watch and Abby....Sweet delicious Abby, she blows me away.

The one thing that's sometimes bugging me is how fast they solve a case. But hey, with shy over 40 minutes I guess there's only so much time for questions. :-)

I'm currently running a Linux Mint livedvd as my primary OS. My boot manager got screwed up a week ago and I can't be arsed to fix it so a livedvd is the best I can do for now.

This means less time using the computer (I'm basically down to only surfing), and more time for other, perhaps more constructive things, such as reading. Or maybe more importantly, playing Portal 2. :-)

I'm not keeping up to date with a lot of things, important things...such as game releases. Portal 2 is due for release this thursday and fck if I'm gonna miss that... I sent an order for the game as soon as I got home from work.

Oh, and I totally missed today's Woot!. Sold out before I even had the chance to buy it. :-( Major bummer on that one, because 1) it's a fricken' Portal tee. And 2) It's a fricken PORTAL TEE! A pretty cute Portal tee at that. Fffffff- D:

Edit April 20: Well, waiting another day meant I could buy it for $5 more. No real harm done, I suppose. And I got a mail saying the game (you just lost it) is on the way. Meep! :-)

A warlock and a bunny can mean only one thing -- Monty Python! They call me... Tim arrived a few days ago, and it's looking mighty fine. And Rainy Souls dropped in the mail today. Delicious, dark, deep. Pretty. Me gusta. :-)

Not really knowing what to expect, I decided to buy season one of Battlestar Galactica (2004).

I just finished the 3-hour-long miniseries/prequel and I quite liked it. The story and the characters are both interesting and the cgi is wonderful. There's really not a whole lot to complain about.

The twist at the end left me with big hopes for the series, can't wait to watch the rest of it. :-)

I'm having a pretty good time playing through Mass Effect 2. It's really quite an enjoyable journey and the story is very interesting. I mean there are some irks, things that I miss from the first game, and a few other that bug me to no end, but apart from those, it's all good.

I'm playing a female Shepard, because I think she's nicer to look at. ;-) I decided not to follow up on my saved games from ME1, partially because I'm unhappy with the romance there. Silly me...

My biggest beef is how they've added "ammunition", even if it's not ammunition per say. In ME1 the weapons had infinite ammo and they overheated after frequent use and you had to wait a few seconds before you could fire again. If you weren't overly trigger-happy, this was no issue.

ME2 comes with weapons changed to incorporate the use of "thermal clips" to avoid overheating. That basically means that when a weapon is overheated, you just pop the thermal clip and insert a fresh, cool one, allowing you to keep shooting. The problem is that you have a somewhat limited supply of thermal clips, essentially making them ammunition -- once you're out of clips, the gun won't fire. I'm running around with a sniper rifle with 8 rounds, tsk..

I got the idea for this comic some week back when my back was hurting more than usual.

Yep.

Having a back (and a sore one at that) sucks on so many levels...