The Great War

I've been operating on a small sleep deficit the last few days, so I'm taking a “short-cut” this week.

But instead of showing you a video or two, I want to introduce you to an entire channel:

The Great War

Whether you have a deep interest in World War I or just a passing curiosity, I can't recommend this channel enough. The production values are amazing, and there's a wealth of information from technology to tactics, politics to science. Even a week to week series, detailing the entire conflict! It's staggering how much info this channel has.

So head on over and have a look, you may find something interesting.

In the mean time, I'm going to wish you a Great Week!. See you next time.

Fascinating Facts

Today is all about fact. Movie facts, in fact.

As usual when I do these lists, all facts are taken form kickassfacts.com so if you want more, head over there.

Here we go:

Mark Hamill was 63 years old while filming Star War: The Force Awakens, the same age as Sir Alec Guiness was while filming his scenes as Ben Kenobi in the original Star Wars film in 1977.

V for Vendetta (2005) – The domino scene, where V tips over black and red dominoes to form a giant letter V, involved 22,000 dominoes. It took 4 professional domino assemblers 200 hours to set it up.

Halloween (1978) – Due to its shoestring budget, the prop department had to use the cheapest $2 mask that they could find in the costume store: a Star Trek William Shatner mask. They later spray-painted the face white, teased out the hair, and reshaped the eye holes. Shatner admitted that for years he had no idea his likeness was used for this film. It was only during an interview that someone mentioned his mask was being used. He has since stated that he is honored by this gesture.

Jurassic Park (1993) – When the T-Rex comes through the glass roof of the Explorer in the first attack, the glass was not meant to break, producing the noticeably genuine screams from the children.

Alien (1979) – Ridley Scott found a practical solution to lighting the aliens’ egg chamber by borrowing blue laser lighting from The Who, who were rehearsing their stage show in the soundstage next door.

Ferris Bueller’s Day Off (1986) – Charlie Sheen stayed awake for 48 hours to achieve a suitably wasted look for his cameo as a drugged-up felon.

Jurassic Park (1993) – Hurricane Iniki ravaged the Hawaiian island of Kaua’i, where the movie was shot, but Richard Attenborough managed to sleep through it. When questioned how by Steven Spielberg, Dickie replied: “Dear boy, I survived the blitz!”

Raiders of the Lost Ark: The filmmakers discovered to their chagrin that the snakes used for the Well of Souls sequence weren’t afraid of fire at all. In fact, they would always try to get closer to the fire to warm themselves. At one point director Spielberg was caught on camera picking up a snake and telling it, face to face, “In the script, you’re supposed to hate fire. Why do you like fire? You’re ruining my movie.”

Predator: Jesse Ventura was delighted to find out from the wardrobe department that his arms were 1″ bigger than Arnold Schwarzenegger’s. He suggested to Schwarzenegger that they measure arms, with the winner getting a bottle of champagne. Ventura lost because Schwarzenegger had told the wardrobe department to tell Ventura that his arms were bigger.

During the filming of ‘Cabin Fever,’ Rider Strong decided to explore the forest alone after a shoot, still in his gruesome makeup. He came across a group of schoolgirls on a field trip, who were horrified, but then recognized him from ‘Boy Meets World,’ and he had to escape from the fangirls.

That's it for this time. A small reminder to all gamers out there, the Steam summer sale is supposed to start on the 23^rd, so get ready for that, but until we meet again, have a great week!

Legend

This week we're taking a look at a movie called Legend. Not Ridley Scott's fantasy film from 1985, but the gangster movie from last year.

This is the story of the Kray twins, Reggie and Ron, and their journey towards becoming the preeminent organized crime lords of London. Or it should be, since it really isn't. Legend is based on true events, but as with all movies, the “truth” only goes so far. The film takes liberties with facts but not too wildly. There was no one moment that made me think “Hang on, that can't be true.” It was all in all a very well put together film, and Tom Hardy (the new Mad Max) does an amazing job portraying both twins. It can't have been easy, but he does it really well, especially since Ronnie was mentally ill.

The movie is set in the 60's and 70's, and as with everything else it is very well done. You truly get a feeling of the era and that's always fun to see. I don't regret watching Legend, but it is essentially not the film it should be in my opinion.

So what's the problem? Simple. It's far more about the stormy relationship between Ron and his girlfriend/wife Frances. Obviously she was a big part of Ron's life and needed to be in the movie, but I entered into things expecting a crime film, not a rocky romance, but that is what I essentially got. Several scenes revolve around her and neither Kray is even there. If they wanted to make a film about Frances, I'm sure it would have been really good, but that's not what's supposed to happen here, and thanks to this, the movie lacks focus. There are of course crime elements in the film, but far less than there are romance and argument scenes. It's simply not what I either expected or wanted, and I don't think it's what was advertized.

Legend could have been the British answer to Goodfellas, but it falls way short. Imagine if Goodfellas had been 85% about Henry and his marriage. That wouldn't have been a very interesting crime drama now would it? No, of course not. Sure Henry's marriage to Karen is an important, no a crucial part of Goodfellas, but there is just as much and more going on elsewhere, and this is not the case in Legend.

Copy-Paste from the start of the Kray's entry on Wikipedia:

“Twin brothers Ronald "Ronnie" Kray (24 October 1933 – 17 March 1995) and Reginald "Reggie" Kray (24 October 1933 – 1 October 2000) were English gangsters who were the foremost perpetrators of organized crime in the East End of London during the 1950s and 1960s. “

All we get to see is some nightclub business and some deals with the American Mafia. Add some violence and the rest is the Ron/Frances angle. Such a shame really, this could have been an epic film.

Finally I want to mention a point about Frances. She in no way deserves what happens to her, but she knew full well who and what Ron was when they met and she married him anyway. It makes it hard to feel sorry for her, when it's so incredibly obvious that her boyfriend is a complete sociopath gangster (and his brother is worse), and yet she happily gives him chance after chance. Combine this with the screen time their relationship occupies, and it just fails.

I won't say I don't recommend Legend, but know what you are about to watch.

Until next time, have a great week!

Computers

So last Tuesday, I decided to upgrade from Windows 7 to 10. Well, actually it was sort of Windows who decided for me.

I had already made up my mind to upgrade while it was still free, I just hadn't gotten around to it. After all, it contains the new DirectX, and as a gamer I will need it sooner or later. Then it popped up and said that my upgrade was scheduled for Tuesday at 23.00 hours. I figured, hell why not? Otherwise I'd just forget to, and then, just to annoy me, Dishonored 2 would of course not run on Windows 7. (This is just my pessimism, I have no reason to assume this.)

At about 22.45 on Tuesday evening, a pop up told me to save my work and press the upgrade button. I politely complied. All went well, it took about half an hour to download the stuff, and I suppose fifteen minutes to install. Then my PC lost it's connection to the internet. Not just the net either, it lost connection to everything. Everything else worked flawlessly, I just couldn't connect anywhere. My wife's computer was happily humming away online, as was my tablet, so it wasn't our connection. We stayed up until after two in the morning trying to fix it, but to no avail. We scoured the net trying to find a solution but nothing worked. Finally we were just too tired to keep trying and stumbled off to bed.

I woke up the following morning ready to do battle against my problem, but like a thief in the night it had slipped away. Yeah, my connection had somehow repaired itself when my PC was shut down. I restarted my PC several times during the previous night, but now (luckily) it was A-OK! I suspect that it was my anti-virus that caused the problem. Lot's of people have had issues with their anti-virus causing errors, so if you're reading this, and you want to upgrade but haven't yet done so: uninstall your anti-virus before you press upgrade. Microsoft won't tell you to do this but it might save you a lot of hassle.

Otherwise my upgrade has been alright, even though I'm not a fan of the tile based menu. No program or game has refused to work, but time will tell.

Speaking of computers, I have a video for you. It's from Tested with Adam Savage of Mythbusters fame. If you have any interest in computers, I urge you to watch it. It should help you appreciate your computer a bit more.

Until next time, have a fantabulous week! (I don't know if that's a word, but it sounds fun).

Link

Good Bad and Ugly

I want to tell you about the good, the bad and the ugly. No, not the Clint Eastwood western, but a trio of disaster movies I watched with my wife last Friday evening.

The good was San Andreas (2015) starring Dwayne 'The Rock' Johnson in the lead. It's all about the San Andreas fault wrecking California. This is the best disaster movie I've ever seen, no contest. It absolutely has it's cheesy moments, no question about it, but it's very well made and the acting is good. It also contains some events I've never seen before, so that was cool. If you hate disaster films, you won't like it, but otherwise I really recommend it.

Now for the bad: San Andreas Quake (2015). If you're wondering about the similarity of the titles here, it's not a coincidence. It's Asylum Films doing their usual “homage” to a more popular movie. A more cynical person than myself would call it a ripoff, but since they almost always are so much worse than the originals, it's actually more of a spoof. Surprisingly this film, bad as it is, had a couple of moments that weren't all horrible, though most of it is really lousy. The saving grace here is that they tried. They really did. The end result may not be good, but the makers put some effort into it unlike:

The ugly, or Fire Twister (2015) starring Casper Van Dien of Starship Troopers fame. This movie is abysmal on every plane and in every way. Somehow it has a higher IMDB score than San Andreas Quake, which is unbelievable since these guys just phoned it in, and lost connection half way through. We have a semi sentient fire tornado that changes size all the time, chases people and apparently teleports at will. We have ex-CIA killers who can't hit anything they try shooting at. The only thing they effectively manage to destroy are a couple of mobile phones. Even if you like ultra cheesy movies, I'd say leave this one alone. It's terrible in every way and I could go on describing the horror, but I won't.

So in conclusion, watch San Andreas, consider giving San Andreas Quake a shot if you are in the mood for some terrible cheese, and burn Fire Twister on sight.

That's all folks, so until next time, have a disaster free week!

Syndicate

Hello my Eccentric Spheres, today we'll be taking a look at Assassins Creed Syndicate.

Long time readers no doubt know that I love the Victorian era and this, the latest installment in the Assassins Creed franchise is set in 1868, so that is gold right there.

Now to be fair, I haven't played most of the games in the franchise, only 1, 2 and 2.1 so I'm not burned out on them. Most say that Assassins Creed 3 was kind of lousy but that the fourth game, Black Flag, was good. There are a couple of “mini-games” or in between games that aren't nearly full size, but I haven't played them either. It's not that I don't want to, it's rather that I harbored a silly thought that I'd play them all in order, and then I kind of didn't.

Anyway, this is why I'm not burned out on the Assassins Creed games and why I'm able to really enjoy Syndicate.

A couple of months ago, I got Syndicate on Steam at 50% so done deal right there! But due to some other things getting in the way, I didn't get to fire up this game until a few days ago.

Is it good? Yes it is. Is it perfect? No, it really isn't.

The first thing that sets Syndicate apart from it's predecessors is the fact that you get to choose between two assassins this time. The siblings Jacob and Evie Frye are essentially the same early on, but the game has an rpg element and you choose which abilities to unlock as the game progresses. In this way you can design them to do different things, should you choose to.

The second thing Syndicate does is add a stealth system. I'm not 100% sure, but I do believe it's the first game in the series that actually has a proper mechanic for this. It used to drive me insane in the previous games when you have to shadow a target, by walking upright in a flamboyant outfit. Luckily all your targets seem to have bad eyesight and can't spot you beyond a certain distance. Still, here it's a very welcome addition and it works well.

Finally, you get a grappling-hook-cable-shooter-magic-devise. I know, it's not magic, but considering you can use it to traverse miles and miles and never run out of cable, it seems pretty magical to me. Anyway, it's a great tool, and saves you a ton of bother. Instead of being forced to climb tall buildings you get to just zip on up there, should you choose to. You still can climb if you want. Some critics have called the cable gun game breaking, but considering it only helps you move around easier and escape pursuit faster, it's more of a convenience thing than anything else. It really is fun though.

So what are the bad things? Well, let's start with the money. Syndicate's money system is horrendously out of sync. A color change for your outfit costs £1000. That's $188.000 in today's money. Since all your equipment is considerably more expensive, like a single action navy colt that comes with a price tag of £2500 or a quarter of a million dollars, the silliness adds up fast. A thug in Whitechapel, one of the most poverty ridden hell-holes of the time, drops £3 when you kill him. That's more than $300 by today's standard. Why is he out making trouble, when he's obviously well off? And this is not taking into account how much stronger the buying power of money was back in the day. I really wish Ubisoft would have toned down the money, since it's pretty jarring.

My other big complaint is the proliferation of guns. Sure there were lots of guns around in those days, but people didn't carry them around all that much. Even criminals frowned on guns, since a simple burglary would become a hanging offense if even one member of your crew had a gun in his pocket. Clubs and knives were the order of the day, but in Syndicate, lot's of street thugs have guns. The worst offenders here are the police. In the late 1800's, parliament considered whether the police should have any access to firearms at all! Let alone give them to the ordinary bobby. Even today, most police officers in Britain do not carry guns. So this is very jarring to me. Add to this the fact that the police are willing to shoot you dead for stealing a carriage, and blissfully ignore when NPC's attempt murder right in front of them, makes them the worst part of the game, in my opinion.

I have encountered a couple of bugs, most of them minor glitches, like a carriage spazzing out uncontrollably and a book floating in the air, but the only bothersome bug is when your map marker goes off to the side. That makes it hard to navigate, but a simple restart fixes this handily.

Apart from these issues, Syndicate is a wonderful game. It's technically great, sound, visuals, voice work and so on, are all good. I haven't finished the story yet, but it seems fine.

Bottom line: if you want to leap from carriage to carriage, run across trains, climb Big Ben, zip-line across the Thames and rub shoulders with luminaries like Alexander Graham Bell, Charles Darwin, Charles Dickens and Florence Nightingale, and murder lots and lots of bad guys, this is definitely a game for you!

That's what I have for you this week, now I'm off to 1868. Until next time, have a great week!

Stellaris

Last week, I got the latest game from Paradox Interactive; Stellaris.

I have played it a bit, but not enough to do a proper review, so consider this more of an impression of the early game.

Stellaris, in case you don't know, is a mix between the Grand Strategy genre Paradox is so famous for, and a 4X game in space. 4X stands for explore, expand, exploit & exterminate.

So in Stellaris, you create a race that has recently become space faring, and it's your job to establish a proper empire for your people. Unlike other Paradox titles that takes place in Europe at some point in history, you have both time and elbow room in Stellaris, which lets you get a handle on things before the action starts. There are no neighbors breathing down your neck as soon as you fire up the game. Since the maps are randomly generated, you can be pretty screwed from the start, even if you don't know it yet, but this holds true for every game with a random map. Usually though, you're going to be fine.

Stellaris is a very well made game, and it's not just about war either. When you create your race, you choose between a lot of options like species, starting technology, political system and ethics. You even choose what kind of planetary type your species thrives on. These options come seamlessly together to create a lot of options and replay value.

As an example, you could create a race of fascist space penguins that are brilliant engineers, or perhaps you'd prefer a race of theocratic mushrooms that believe in enslaving the galaxy. My point is that you will find a race you want to play, of that I am fairly certain.

As the game progresses, you research new technologies and expand your borders. You will encounter hostile beings floating around in the galaxy as well as space pirates and other blossoming nations like your own. Then there are the fallen empires, old civilizations that have stagnated and become corrupt. If I understand them correctly, they don't advance anymore, but they are ridiculously powerful in the beginning so tread carefully. Piracy is luckily not that much of a bother, and you can usually deal with them pretty easily, but the giant space amoebas are nasty. They can easily outmatch your initial fleet six times over.

I've had starts that were absolutely impossible, but overall I think Stellaris is a pretty fair game. It's fun and atmospheric, and not too hard to understand or get a grip on. Oh yes, one thing I forgot to mention, the game explains things to you in different ways depending on how you civilization sees things. Example: if you are xenophobic, first contact with another species is explained as something horrible, but if you are a xenophile, it's a wondrous event, worth celebrating. It's the small details like that which really sells the game as a title worth getting.

When I get further into the game, I can speak with authority on what it's like, but until then, you are going to have to be patient. Or go look it up on Youtube, it's your decision.

So, until we see each other again, have a great week.