Our Daily Beard
Ayup duck!
Right, a quickie today, in the form of a little haiku.
Wise Odin wept not,
When Baldur fell to mischief,
For time is a wheel.
Okay- see you tomorrow!
Not ‘see’, obviously, but… yeah.
[sociable]
Our Daily Beard
Saltinations.
Did you see the first episode of The Returned?
If you’re French, you’ve probably see the whole thing, as it’s a French show (Les Revenants).
Subtitled, it’s a smooth and stylish supernatural mystery. With the exception of a token creepy child, it feels very fresh and modern. Some people, mostly kids, die in a bus crash. Years later, they come back. They apparently don’t remember the incident. This makes for a powerful first episode where some bereaved parents see their daughter come home, untouched by the accident. She doesn’t know that she was dead, only that she woke up in the countryside with no memory since leaving that fateful day. She just waltzes in and makes herself a sandwich!
Other stuff goes on, a lot of very French posing and being thin and beautiful, or alternately looking like a 70s alcoholic. The first episode is very slow burning, but mysterious enough to hook me.
Give it a try. There’s nothing much to say at this juncture without spoiling things, which honestly is a good thing. Experience it for yourself. Now that Game of Thrones is over for a year, we need some stand-in shows.
Mhysa! Tell your children not walk my way…
[sociable]
Our Daily Beard
I can barely manage to summon up enough shit to give about E3.
Just not feeling it this year!
However, I’ve been keeping up a cursory following of what’s going on.
This is the gist as I understand it:
The PS4 will be region free and DRM free for many things, so you can play used games on it and imported games too. This is pretty massive and undermines the Xbox One nicely. It means that ebay will be the new second hand game shop of choice, too. With everything going ‘downloadey’ these days and the internet being notoriously global in nature, this makes good sense to me. There’s hardly any point in differentiating between countries; they will get their hands on games in other ways. You can even play your game on a mate’s PS4, unlike Xbox One which apparently only lets you share a game once.
Xbox One also screws you in that you need to connect to the internet at least once in 24 hours, just to play your games offline. Big brother’d. All for the low-low price of $499 (£429). The PS4 is $399, lulz. Both are still too pricey for my tastes… but there’s always the re-released Xbox 360!
Microsoft isn’t all bad, you know. Xbox LIVE Gold subscribers will now get two 360 games for free each month! This starts in July and the titles mentioned so far are Assassin’s Creed 2 and Halo 3. Leaving aside the fact that these games cost about £7 new and everyone already has them, it’s a nice touch that makes Gold a bit more worth the money. I’m just glad that 360 isn’t being forgotten yet. Microsoft Points are going out, allowing you to just buy stuff with money! Finally! It’s nice to know exactly how overpriced things are without having to do the dreaded maffz.
Oh, games. We have a lot more to go on now, which is great. Largely it’s sequels, which is fair enough, such as Dead Rising 3 where the zombies will be more realistic than ever, yada yada. I gather than the majority of Xbox gaming buzz is around Titanfall, a shooty jetpack thing, and Ryse: Son of Rome, which looks awfully quicktimey but also quite fun. I like historical epics, so I can stomach a bit of hammering Y to gladius the shit out of a barbarian. Oh, Metal Gear Solid V will be on both platforms. This is nice news, as I’m tired of the old exclusivity garbage. Snake rides a horse, I think, which is how stealth works now. Okay, so maybe MGS has had it’s day.
Elder Scrolls Online also goes both ways, just like that goth chick in collage claimed to in order to appear interesting.
The PS4 has scored a lot of points in the last day. It’s looking far more user-friendly and at this juncture, I’d be inclined to go that way, if I were to buy a next-gen at all.
Until then, it’s PC all the way, yo.
[sociable]