Amazon brought me lots of stuff this morning. The next couple of Richard Morgan books (and I’m going to have to buy some Black Widow this coming week, the Fiest stuff I’m missing and the third Bendis DD hardback which I don’t know how I missed out on. Also the new Hives album and the Live Planxty gig from the Point last year.
Oh and a small DVD boxset which from all accounts there has been over 50 delivered to the office this morning, our poor postman ain’t too happy. I fully expect a general listserv this afternoon reminding us not to get bulky personal stuff delivered here. Ah well.
I went to see Collateral last night. It was fun, lots of Michael Mann styling. Not too smart but not really stupid either. with Alex summed up Cruise’s performance pretty well, “he does blank and emotionless very well”. Jamie Foxx was excellent. It was about an hour longer than it needed to be, but you didn’t really notice till it’s over, too busy watching the style Mann threw into everything. The nightclub scene in particular was excellent.
Not much on this week. I had to start a new character in CoH last night…
Respec is too hard. It’s as simple as that. I went from a debt free happy go lucky close on 27 scrapper to a hit the debt cap and came close to cancelling my account over 4 attempts. The first one ended with 36k debt and failure before we even hit the last room. The second was a complete disaster and fell apart straight away when the bad guys were 6 levels above us. The third had dropouts and then the fourth. Well the fourth was a fucking disaster.
Great team, healer, two blasters, an illusion controller and the scrapper me. We did well. We died a lot but we made headway and we were about to do it. We were doing really really well in the waves against the reactor. It was at full health, as were all of us and we had only two more waves of attacks to go. We finally thought we were going to do it. 3 of us had hit the debt cap, i.e. so much that we could not incur anymore so respec was going to be a big reward for us.
Until both the last waves came at the same time. They slaughtered us. We had no inspiration left. That’s got to be the biggest bug in the game, not being able to buy any during a TF. Blasters fell within seconds, controller followed shortly. I was next to the healer who just kept healing me but to no avail, I fell. He was able to keep healing himself to last another few minutes. A fast run from the hospital to get back was to no avail. The reactor blew and 4 hours of work and an extra 30k debt all for nothing. We couldn’t get the last 10 villains. It was about 10.30 on Saturday night and I was just wrecked. I actually felt tired and frustrated and upset by a computer game. I was not impressed. I had at least 3 deaths during the day due to patch issues that I could have petitioned but I really didn’t care enough to do so.
I gave some strong thought to cancelling my account. My main character just got gimped to hell. I need about 20k to get to level 27, double that because of debt and I’ll still have over 35k when I do level. Sure it will be good for influence and I’ll be able to afford to refit almost everything with 30 SO (nice for Stamina) but I’m not gonna be able to play it for a week or so. I doubt they are going to do anything for the chars. which did get gimped as it was too hard. It’s been made easier twice already in patches and hopefully more to come.
So I created a new character. A Fire/Ice blaster. Ice was a bad choice in hindsight, I’ve got 7 offensive powers so my end goes quick. I really need some stamina on this one. Not sure I’ll bother with a travel power. I would go for Hasten but it’s not a good power to combine with end issues. So I’m having fun with that and it lets me actually play in the Hollows for a bit which is nice. Got to fight some invasion last night, died a bit but had fun and took some of them with me. Much much easier to find a team at lower levels and it’s often players like me using an alt and just looking for a laugh so we have more fun. Hit 8 when I decided to sleep and I’ve not actually done any missions yet. I’ll kick them off soon and try and work up to 10 or 12 tonight. Blasters are fun. Main is a scrapper so it’s really nice to have ranged attacks so those running away can be hit. Ice Sword gives me a nice close combat attack too and it seems *really* powerful.
Anyway I’m having fun so far. On the same server as most of the V now, I suspect they are all way higher than me but I can power through for a bit. For all it’s issues, and there are many issues I’m impressed with the rollout of so much extra in such a short time.
If only Eve was as good. Roll on Shiva. Training for some of the nice gunnery skills will be preped on the 26th and the patch on the 28th seems set to bring the advanced learning skills which I want big time. Looking forward to getting them and to knocking some time off the longer tougher skills. I have some cash in the bank now to play around with and it looks very likely that I’ll actually get to make some more soon. Still having corp trouble despite lots of effort. Not quite ready to burn bridges but getting close.
Comics wise, DD 64 was a decent ending to a story I hadn’t enjoyed all that much. Not really sure where it’s going as a title anymore and I’m certainly not enjoying it as much as I use to. It’s still one of the best titles on the market but that’s not really saying much. Also enjoyed a whole lot, Ellis’ second(?) collection; Hellblazer: Setting Sun. Short stories through and through, but some really good stuff. I enjoyed Haunted a whole lot too, it’s a shame Ellis didn’t get to do more with Constantine.
It really must be coming into Autumn. I was walking to the tube station this morning (late as ever) and several chestnuts fell from the tree above me during a gust of wind. Something made me pick one up and it’s sitting on my desk now. I like chestnuts, always have. Not to eat, not to play just to collect. When I was much younger, around the start of October my parents took the kids to Malahide Castle which was only about a mile away to collect chess nuts. We’d wander around the grounds into the woods for a couple of hours with plastic bags that we would fill up. There was one spot in particular that I use to drag them along to. A couple of bigger tress had been chopped or blown down and there was space to move around a number of trees and pick up stuff. I don’t remember the last time we did it, I was the one with the most enthusiasm for it and would nag them into bringing us there most years. I can easily see myself picking up some more as I pass there in the mornings and evenings.
I watched the fireworks for the end of the Thames Festival last night. Sat ontop of Primrose hill with Hebe. It was pretty cold and they were not really all that impressive. I’d say they were a damn sight better actually on the Thames, they looked very much as if they should be going off above you and not in front of you.