Meatspace's Cheesy One Liners

Back when we were still making Meatspace, I drank too much coffee one day and wrote down cheesy one liners that our characters could deliver when killing people pretty hard. The list isn't meant to be complete. These would be reserved for the most brutal of takedowns, dismemberments and vaporisations. No one's making Meatspace any more so at least you'll get to see the cheesy one liners.


The Communist (a midrange gunsy type, speaks with passion, any accent but Russian)

"No justice, no peace!"
"Space capitalism must fall!"
"The final days of late stage space capitalism are here!"
"This is for the people!"
"We own our tools of production."
"You've been nationalised."
"Hammer and sickle and gun."
"The masses have spoken!"


The Professional (a longrange gunsy type, speaks with disgust, haughty)

"Am I the only professional here?"
"This is a hostile takeover."
"We're merging with you."
"We have to let you go."
"You've been laid off."
"The floating charge has crystallised."
"What is this amateur hour?"


The Nerd (hackery type, speaks like a fucking nerd)

"There was a bug in your code, I fixed it."
"Initiating garbage collection."
"Get rekt, noob!"
"Get on my level!"
"Your system has experienced a critical failure."
"I'm a nice guy!"
"Have you tried turning it off and on again?"


The Crane (unusually tall melee type, speaks like a mix between Saint of Killers and Anton Chigurh)

"Death is weakness leaving your body."
"My fists, your death, my love."
"Flesh is made to be pounded."
"You were anxious, now you are at peace."
"Shuffle off this mortal coil, but gently."
"Your journey is over, so mine can continue."
"Life is suffering, yours is over."
"Through pain, I have made you free."


The Pacifist (bad at shooting but hard to hit, constantly on the verge of a nervous breakdown)

"I think I'm going to puke."
"You made me do this!"
"Sometimes violence is... necessary... I hope this was one of those times."
"I am so sorry about this."
"What have I become?"
"I wish there was another way."
"Next time give peace a chance, ok?"

Making Up The Contango Universe - Aristotle's Poetics & Our Core Technologies

Back when I was getting my BA in English I was determined to be a writer. A foolish thought, I know. One book that stuck with me from that period of my life, though I guess it's more accurate to call it a scroll, was Aristotle's Poetics.

The topic is basically "how to make good literature". Out of the different subjects he covers, I found mythos (plot) and ethos (charactres) to be most relevant to me. I won't be rephrasing the entire sections here for obvious reasons, if you're into writing, you should definitely go and check out the entire thing. Do keep in mind that Aristotle was extremely sexist and the dude literally does not check his privilege even a single time.

Aquamanile in the Form of Aristotle and Phyllis

There's two things that Aristotle repeats a few times regarding both characters and plot - that they have to come out of probability or necessity. That the characters need to be true to life and consistent (ie "in character"). He says that the difference between history and poetry (ie literature) isn't that one is in verse and the other isn't, but rather that one talks about what was and the other - would could be or could have been.

This ties in nicely with my (and Ed's) love for realism in fictional things - be those things games or sci-fi universes. So when we started flashing out the Contango universe, we obviously wanted to make it a more or less plausible future of the world we live in today. The farther you go into the said imaginary future, the harder it becomes to convince yourself that it is still plausible. To overcome this we went with technological determinism. We decided to choose our core technologies and then imagine what the world around them would look like.

Every industrial revolution (we've currently had 3 and are reportedly in the middle of the 4th one), had a core technology (or a technological breakthrough). You can also talk about the core technologies of each sine wave cycles of capitalism but I'll concentrate on the economics of the future in the next entry. First industrial revolution saw steam power and mechanisation of labour, second - assembly lines and electrification, third - computers and automation of factories and the fourth one involves the so-called cyber physical systems, ie internet of things and big data gone wild.

"Cyber physical systems in the UK!" Sex Pistols 40th Anniversary Tour

So we carried on from there. The fifth one would be fusion power and the beginning of space exploitation and the sixth one - worm hole travel and mass colonisation of our part of Milky Way. Also cloning. Quite a lot of cloning.

If you think about it, every sci-fi universe has core technologies - Star Wars has massive ships and crapsabres, Star Trek has teleportation and warp drives (both of them have FTL communications, if I'm not mistaken), Alien has 80s CRT screens and no internet, Blade Runner has cyborgs and constant rain and Terminator and Matrix have a pile of stinking shit that makes no sense. We chose fusion and worm holes. And super over extended neoliberal capitalism in space.

Having fusion power potentially necessitates accelerated space exploration and exploitation to procure Helium 3 (and maybe also Deuterium) and makes energy abundant as long as raw material shipments aren't disrupted. Mining operations in our solar system would need space travel to become much cheaper than it is today - hence the development of space fountains, orbital rings and launch loops. With the amount of energy an efficient fusion core would give you, you could have artificial gravity in space ships using only current day technology (Diamagnetism).

The wormhole technology allows near instant travel and exchange of information between two wormhole stations. This makes possible somewhat rapid colonisation of our galactic neighbourhood. The stations would still need to be towed to the new site through conventional means and would only open to those who were authorised to go through, thus further reinforcing the divide between the rich and the poor, the core worlds and the fringe, those with power and those who have nothing. You would have worlds were people farm using oxen and those where they are fed grapes by cyborg lions who speak only Finnish. In a world like this a person could be cloned into slavery and be required by law to vote for Proxima Centauri B next top supermodel and like it.

He doesn't need his hands to vote.

In the next entry I'll talk about the more economic side of things and how capitalism could carry on 300 years into the future.

How Contango's Universe Came To Be

As some of you may already know, I promised to start writing about creating the Contango universe and challenges and decisions that generally, or not so generally, come with creating fully functioning fictional universes. But before I do that, I thought it would make sense to start with the story of how Contango universe came about.

Back in the dusty and forgotten 2015 we (Ed, Pete, Claudia, Simon and I) decided that we were now done with Galacto's Intolerant (our first and only game) and that we would work on a new game - one that we would all enjoy playing. (Unlike Galacto which no one ever could possibly enjoy playing (no, I mean it, it literally made children cry)). So, to our own surprise we came up with an idea of Meatspace - a top-down 4 player co-op sci-fi space ship heist game. I genuinely don't remember who came up with what part or aspect of this imaginary game. I remember it as a 5-way flow of consciousness with Ed writing stuff on the whiteboard and me drinking a lot. I don't even remember who suggested the name, could have been Simon. There is potentially a video record of this conversation somewhere on Ed's hard drive. He likes to record things he can use against us in court later.

Vertical slice concept art in da house!

The name came from Gibson's Neuromancer and is the opposite of cyberspace. Meatspace is where we all still live today. It made sense for the game because it had "space" in it and the game would have a lot of meat, ie dead clones (and probably not just clones). Our game was going to feature a gratuitous cloning tech and all your characters were meant to be clones of themselves. You could kill yourself at any time during the mission and be replaced with a copy of yourself from the beginning of the mission. You could then for example go up to your own still very warm corpse and get some still very warm gear from it. And so on.

A coward dies a thousand times before his death, but the valiant also dies a thousand time in the sci-fi future.

The universe was meant to have some kind of capitalist system with a wide gap between the rich and the poor and your characters were meant to be these sort of Robin Hood types that were trying to get to the ship carrying the Contingency Vault, rob it and bail out their home planet which was about to go bankrupt. That's pretty much as far as we had gone in developing the lore.

We than pitched this game to the UK Games Fund in hopes of getting some funding but instead got a pathetic little rejection letter that contradicted itself on why we were rejected. They gave at least some of that round's funding to a bunch of ye olde games companies that were already doing pretty well. Oh the (non-fiction) irony of the capitalist universe.

Now we're back in 2016, the best kind of year in human history. Ed and I decided to change up what we were doing with our company, YouTube channel and Patreon and as a part of that change we decided to do a webcomic. We had briefly toyed with and rejected the idea of doing a webcomic maybe about 5 years ago. It was pretty clear that Meatspace wasn't going to happen so Ed suggested that we do something with the universe that it was set in. It became Contango - the glorious place of disaster space capitalism.

We took what little lore we had already developed ie capitalism in space + cloning and added a whole bunch of lore on top. This is what the future entries in these series will concern themselves with - the world building on a rather large scale - the what and the why.

Thoughts on Rainbow Six Siege

When I was younger, the only quality that a videogame needed to have for me to be interested in it was to be a videogame. Except for Karateka. I hated that game. It's the first game I deleted from my PC. Anyway. Today I have 455 games on Steam alone and until recently used to play regularly only Arma 3. So if a new game manages to engage me for more than 10 hours I pause and think why this anomaly may be occurring. So here are some private subjective words about Rainbow Six Siege (30 hours in).


The Good

There's no jumping. There's probably nothing that turns me off about an FPS more than jumping. I would play counter strike a lot more if there was no jumping in it. I know it's the classicestest thing you can do in an FPS, second to only shooting and followed by crouching but I don't care. Don't talk to me about jumping.
It's very structured. Each round lasts no more than 4 minutes and there can be from 3 to 5 rounds in a casual match. There's a clear prep phase when defenders establish defences and attackers do recon and then the round proper starts. There can be only one of each kind of operative per round.
No respawn during match. Self-explanatory.
If you're dead, you're not necessarily out. The dead control the cameras (my new band). They can mark enemies in-game or feedback to the live teammates their positions through voip and/or text. The options for dead attackers are rather more limited if all the drones were taken out.
Most stuff can be destroyed or shot through. This, together with the wide range of choice you have when picking operatives and their loadouts, makes every round very different. This is on the level of A3BR replayability.
Friendly fire is always on. Even in casual multiplayer (in your face, CSGO!). This is how god intended every FPS to be.
There is no singleplayer campaign. This may sound like a weird reason but every game should 'understand' what it is and what it isn't and R6 Siege is not a singleplayer game. More isn't always better, obviously.



The Bad

You have to use Uplay to play R6. You need to have your Steam friends on there to play with them.
The ingame UI takes a lot of getting used to. It's what people would generally refer to as 'terrible'. But at least right click doesn't equal 'back', like in that one fucking game that ruined my life.
You get two overlays ingame - one for Steam and one for Uplay. You can have them up at the same time. The joy is infinite. The Uplay overlay is pure trash, by the way.
You have to grind to unlock operatives and/or pay for them. R6 is not a F2P game.
There are horrible cosmetic items you can buy with grind or real money. Thankfully you can't trade them.
What you see isn't always what the opponent sees. Some particle effects are client based - while you are in smoke on your screen, the opponent may be seeing you very clearly outside of it.
It's very strange that the world of R6 Siege has no doors. It makes sense from the gameplay mechanics but just... so eerie. There isn't a single door in the entire game. Might as well called it Rainbow Six But No Doors At All Mate.


Conclusion: 7/10. No, I'm kidding. It's really good. If you like competitive tactical CQC FPS games, this is the best in recent memory.

Predicting The Singularity: The Ultimate Formula

So you want to give the world an accurate prediction of when the technological singularity is going to happen? It doesn't matter if you're picking the humans transcending biology or runaway AI advances or any other kind of singularity. This formula I'm about to give you works for anything that is possible in theory but we have no way of doing it right now. Even world peace! You don't even need to have a degree in anything. The very basic understanding of math will suffice!

So first lets establish the variables.

s = the year the singularity of your choice is going to happen
b = the year you were born
a = the average human life span (worldwide average is 71 at the time of writing this)
t = the contingency constant which always equals 10 (this is in case you live in a western country and/or are very healthy)

And the super accurate formula is: s=b+a+t

That's it! You have the formula! All the futurologists will hate you now but they've been using this for years so who cares about them.

So lets say you were born in 1963, then the singularity will happen in 2044. Isn't that neat? Of course, if you were born in 1971, the singularity is going to happen in 2052 but that's pretty neat too!

Anyway, I need to go. Happy singularity predictions!

From zero to hero!!

Really Baking Your Noodle or How To Break Out Of Simulated Reality With Money

If you've ever (re)watched The Matrix as an adult, you may have realised how poorly it is written. Of course, when I first saw it through my 13 year old eyes, I thought it was pure genius. But lets be honest, I was wrong about a lot of things back then. The artistic merits of The Matrix were only a small and insignificant misconception of my 13 year old self. I'm trying to pick a quote from the film that would embody its infantile dialogue but it's harder than I anticipated because, honestly, any exchange would do the job. Let's go with this one:

Trinity: Neo... no one's ever done anything like this.
Neo: That's why it's going to work.

Yes, Neo. That's exactly why it's going to work. "No one's ever taken 20 cyanide pills and lived, Neo!" "That's why it's going to work, Trinity!" 

Forks are definitely real though.

Let's not even get into the whole premise of "machines needed energy and since the sun wasn't available anymore, they're using humans". God forbid they used geothermal power, nuclear power or, you know, burned the food they gave to their "batteries". 

But all of that asinine lazy sci-fi aside, the concept of simulated/unreal/illusory reality isn't new and wasn't created by the Wachowskis. It goes all the way back to sceptical hypotheses like the Descartes' Evil Demon or Zhuangzi's Dream Argument. Then there's mythological manifestations of the same idea like Vishnu sleeping and dreaming the world we live in. They all boil down to roughly the same concept of 'what if the world we perceive as real isn't real'. What if there is a more real world beyond it and we can't perceive it because of either our own inability to do so or because we are being actively deceived by powers beyond our grasp. 

If this kid wakes Vishnu up, I'm going to be so pissed.

And yeah, fine, whatever, what if the real isn't real, what is real anyway and all that. Great. If you have time to be bothered about that, you're probably not worried about food and shelter. Good for you. 

The reason I'm writing this, however, isn't me getting nostalgic about The Matrix. It's because the simulation theory (or simulated reality hypothesis, however you want to call it) has been gaining some non-ironic traction in what may or may not be the real world and the angle that those with power and money are taking on it is somewhat disturbing.

The modern discussions around simulated reality are less about demons and dreams and more about computer simulated ancestors (that's us!). Hence why I was reminded of The Matrix.

This is Hans.

Even though Hans Moravec is probably the first person to have written about the modern version of the simulated reality, it's Nick Bostrom's trilemma that most people rely on for their posthuman computer simulated reality needs.

This is a photo of Nick.

In his 2003 essay Are You Living In A Computer Simulation? Bostrom argues that at least one of the following statements has to be true:

(1) the human species is very likely to go extinct before reaching a “posthuman” stage;
(2) any posthuman civilisation is extremely unlikely to run a significant number of simulations of their evolutionary history (or variations thereof);
(3) we are almost certainly living in a computer simulation.

For an unknown reason, a lot of people seem to have concluded that Bostrom's trilemma somewhow means that we're living in an ancestral simulation. Among them is our beloved future King of Mars - Elon Musk. In June he said that he's been having so many conversations about AI and simulated reality that "my brother and I finally agreed that we'd ban any such conversations if we're ever in a hot tub. Because that really kills the magic".

mmmmmm....

Here's the full thing Elon said at Recode regarding ancestral simulations:

The strongest argument for us probably being in a simulation is the following: 40 years ago we had Pong — two rectangles and a dot. That was what games were. Now, 40 years later, we have photorealistic, 3D simulations with millions of people playing simultaneously and it's getting better every year. And soon we'll have virtual reality, augmented reality... If you assume any rate of improvement at all, then games will become indistinguishable from reality. Even if that rate of advancement drops by 1,000 from what it is right now. Then you just imagine 10,000 years in the future, which is nothing in the evolutionary scale. So it's a given that we're clearly on a trajectory to have games that are indistinguishable from reality, and those games could be played on any set-top box or a PC and there would probably be billions of such computers and set-top boxes, it would seem to follow that the odds that we're in base reality is one in billions. Tell me what's wrong with that argument?  

I will do so in a moment. Then he also added:

Arguably we should hope that that's true, because otherwise if civilisation stops advancing, that may be due to some calamitous event that erases civilisation. So maybe we should be hopeful that this is a simulation, because otherwise... We are either going to create simulations indistinguishable from reality or civilisation ceases to exist.

And to hell with the second statement in Bostrom's trilemma, I guess. God forbid the posthumans decide not to simulate their ancestors out of ethical concerns. What kind of venture capitalist future would that be? To be able to do something exciting but refrain from it because you may cause immeasurable pain to billions of people is probably the definition of silly at this point in Elon's hot tub of magic. I'd much rather be in a base reality that never makes it to the posthuman stage than one of the ancestors of the civilisation that would actually go ahead and create our world so full of misery. If you don't agree, next time you feel any significant pain, physical or emotional, think how you have to go through that because someone had too much time and processing power on their hands.

If you're thinking, fine, Andro, sure but who cares which image of the future Elon Musk and his brother (or any other billionaires) are masturbating to in their hot tub, I guess you haven't been following the 2016 election campaign in US at all. But it potentially gets worse.

Artists depiction, not to scale.

A very recent profile of Sam Altman (the president of Y Combinator, among other silicon things) in The New Yorker has the following line: "two tech billionaires have gone so far as to secretly engage scientists to work on breaking us out of the simulation". (Read the entire piece if you want to get more depressed about life, by the way). There aren't that many tech billionaires out there to not be worried that one of them is the infamous Trump endorser and lover of secret funds - Peter Thiel - who just before I wrote this sentence donated 1.25 million dollars to the campaign of the most famous pussy grabber in history.

If the line about the not-so-secret funding for simulation research is true, not only are our entrepreneurial elite burning money on an altar of a pointless endeavour but potentially devising a way to terminate it. Let's examine both of these ugly potentialities in turn.

Maybe I'm growing old and losing my penchant for "the truth" but imagine that we are indeed in a simulation. Imagine that it has been proved beyond doubt that it is a simulation, we are all virtual entities in some great future computer and there's a more real reality beyond. Now let me ask you, how exactly would this improve anyone's life? If you think there was an increase of violence and hatred after Brexit vote, you better get ready for unprecedented levels of nihilism and wanton disregard for human life. Finding out that we live in a simulation is like finding out that you were adopted and the reason your biological parents abandoned you wasn't because it was an unwanted pregnancy or they didn't have enough money to raise you but because they though you were a very ugly and dumb looking baby and they were ashamed to have you. They kept all the other ones, by the way, because they looked fine. Now you still have to go about your life just the same but I bet you feel like shit.

You were adopted!

So how does one break out of a simulation which is the only place where they exist? Neo had it easy, he took a pill that a stranger gave him. Hm. Maybe we should ask someone who has actually tried it. How about Joshua Cooke?

Josh Cooke, a 19-year-old in Oakton, Virginia, owned a trenchcoat like the one worn by Neo, the character played by Keanu Reeves in the movie, and kept a poster of his hero on his bedroom wall. Then he bought a gun similar to the one used by Neo to fight evil [sic]. In February, he shot his father and mother in the basement of their home and then called the police. His lawyers say he believed that he was living inside the Matrix.

Ah cool. Murder. That's how. Nowadays Josh is campaigning from his prison cell for the ban on assault weapons. Says he would have killed a lot more people if he had a shotgun or an AR-15. Or a lot of money? I guess you can dismiss Josh as "crazy" but does Peter Thiel look "sane" to you?

Hell yeah!

Fine, fine. Maybe I'm being too sensationalist and vulgar here, letting my imagination run loose. My simulated imagination. If that's the case, I apologise. All I'm saying is 783 million people living in the world right now do not have access to clean water and almost 2.5 billion do not have access to adequate sanitation. So fuck your simulation and its research.

Castle America

A few years ago, Ed and I started "working" on a game with a German PhD student named Boris. The game was meant to be called Castle America. At the time, I wrote a very short history of the game's universe from the proverbial "current day" to the opening of the game. You can read it below.

By mid-21^st century designer life forms became commonplace and served many purposes, both utilitarian and vain. They were mostly proprietary single-cell organisms ranging from carbon monoxide neutralizing bacteria to wrinkle smoothing fungus¹. Due to a rather successful bacterial climate and pollution level control coupled with ever more efficient and economical internal combustion engines, the usage of fossil fuels was declining much slower than anticipated at the turn of the century. The solar power research was all but abandoned as the fresh air returned to urban centres and it seemed that being able to drive for two months on a full tank meant that oil would never run out.

In 2057, Viltran, an American corporation specializing in materials research and production, successfully introduced a plastic eating bacteria that was meant to solve the plastic recycling problem. The new life form was based on a nylon eating Flavobacterium K172 that was discovered about 80 years before and had once been the poster child of evolution. PEB quickly become a media darling – it's ATI² peaking at 10K RPS³. Pebbies, as they soon were called, depolymerized plastic at record rates and turned it into a glucose like monomer that resembled white ash.

PEB, like almost any other designer bacteria, was hardcoded to die after one week no matter how favourable the conditions and would multiply only once – their offspring were barren. All of this changed after what came to be known as the Maastricht Outbreak of 2058 when in a newly inaugurated bacterial recycling plant one of the Pebbies' offspring inscrutably mutated the barren code out of itself. When the custodian droids whose job it was to collect the waste monomer didn't return from the consumption chamber, the human staff went in to investigate. They found lifeless droid hulls stripped of all plastic and covered in white ash. All precautions were said to have been applied but the new strain somehow got out. What followed was a mass extinction event on molecular level.

The nations scrambled in panic to stop the epidemic that was rapidly and irreversibly eroding the very cogs that kept the society going but things only got worse. The Plastic Rot, also called The Great White Plague, became the Oil Rot. Through additional series of mutations the Pebbies developed a taste for the very source of plastic. As is the wont of humankind, in times of great trouble and grave danger we turn to our brother's throat. Armies moved in to take control of uncontaminated oil reserves disregarding national borders and international agreements. The bloodshed that followed was only tempered by the rapidly disintegrating military technology. USA who had been secretly developing SBSP⁴ technology for two decades activated the program which gave it an enormous edge in energy production. Two days later China retaliated by crashing all of its zombie satellites into the American ones, thus bringing about true a Kessler Syndrome and perhaps forever denying humanity space travel.

It is estimated that around 30 million people died in the Oil Wars that followed the outbreak. In the next two years, 90% of human population perished due to starvation, poor sanitation and exposure. Before driving itself to extinction, Pebbies are thought to have destroyed 95% of oil and its byproducts.

The date is 2098. The remains of human civilization are sheltered in walled-in city states known as the Murrs. Most of the Murrs practice very strict immigration policy while reluctantly trading with the dwellers of the wilderness. Chunks of plastic have superseded all competing currencies – the affluent elite of the apocalypse wears it as jewellery and good luck charms. The non-citizenry that lives outside the walls consists of nomadic hunter-gatherers and bandits.

1 Most multi-cellular artificial organisms remained unstable, though a Korean company briefly tried to market affordable glow-in-the -dark kittens. The whole affair folded quite quickly after it became clear that the kittens only lived three to four weeks before succumbing to a rather grotesque form of cancer.

2Aggregate Trending Index

3Reposts per second

4Space-based solar power

Thoughts on No Man's Sky (so far)

Pretty much everyone and their racist uncle did a hot take on No Man's Sky at this point. This isn't really hot or a take. It's more for me than anyone else unlucky enough to come across it. It's a way for me to think about game design and verbalize sporadic feelings of "oohhh" and "meh". It's also a way for me to get back into the habit of typing things.

According to Steam I have now played 13 hours of NMS which is probably more like 10 in reality. I've visited 10 systems and 22 planets. I'll start with the good things.


The Good Things:

• The game is very much what the developers promised. You visit places, you discover species, you can name them, you mine and loot for resources and technology, you craft things, sometimes you fight, there's a mystery element to overall goal and the game looks pretty.
• It really does look pretty. Here it's probably whoever calibrated the "randomly generated" colour scheme to blame rather than the people responsible for procgen. More on that below.
• Space ship designs are pretty. They look plucked straight from book covers of medium trashy sci-fi from 30-40 years ago. It is refreshing to look at colourful ships instead of grey rectangles.
• After 10 hours of play, it's still exciting to land on new planets. 
• The soundtrack is good and fits the game. 
• I am still somewhat interested in the "mysteries" of the game. 
• When you're sitting in your ship and it's raining, you can hear the rain hitting the canopy. 
• Some of the animals I've discovered looked moderately amusing. 
• A lot of the non-procgen objects are pretty cool looking (like the ships I mentioned above). 
• When you start the game from your desktop, it brings you straight to your character without having to go through menus.  

The Not So Good Things:

• The menus. No, the entire UI. What happened here? Why? What was the point? It's just pure pain. Yes, I understand, it's designed to be used with a controller but that's only part of the problem. The fact that clicking anything is a one button QTE is borderline insane. 
• The inventory system in Terror From The Deep is better than the inventory in NMS. I dread pressing tab and/or getting the INVENTORY FULL message. If we were to define a game genre by what problem is the player solving most often, NMS would fall under "inventory management game". And this is after the developers increased the inventories for both, ships and exosuits, with a launch day patch.
• If the lead writer and all the contributing writers wanted to end up with sloshy space opera for young children, they done did it. I guess some people like this sort of thing. I don't. It's naive exalted dribble about past and future and universe and godlike aliens. 
• The main character keeps having a gay old time touching monoliths around the world and getting all flustered and falling over his own feelings of wonder and amazement. It's like a space opera equivalent of a laugh track. Everything the guy says comes out water clogged and limp. 
• Yes, I guess technically, to a certain degree, every planet is unique and so is every animal. But they are unique like two coins of same value minted at the same time are unique 10 years later. Each of those coins will have slightly different scratches and maybe one of them will have a little dent. Sure, I guess most planets in real life are same desolate rocky places. Out of the (now about) 25 planets (I played a bit more since I started writing this) I only found 1 that was almost empty of life and that got me pretty excited since all the other ones have the same bovine quadrupeds filling up the landscape with their wonky animation. I'm going to get a new bullet point for the "sameness continued".
• Not only are all the animals very reminiscent of each other with minor changes but so are all the alien made structures. There's 6 or 8 structure types you can find on the planets and though outwardly there are 3 different looking space stations (corresponding to 3 different alien races), they are all exactly the same on the inside. In every station there's a door on the left that you need to have an Atlas Pass v1 to open and door on the right that you don't where and alien is sitting next to a trade terminal. Every time. 
• There are plants on each planet that are not just similar, but exactly the same and giving you exactly the same resource when you interact with them through the amazing one button QTE. 
• As far as I can tell, there are 3 alien races in NMS: the science race, the trading race and the warrior race. This is not a joke. It is literally that cliche. 
• Every time you talk to an alien, there's a 5 second wind up power point slide animation before you manage to do anything with the dialogue. It's unskippable and if there's one thing that will make me stop playing NMS, it will be this before the inventory system does me in. It doesn't help that a similar crap wind up animation plays every time you save the game or get an achievement. 
• A lot of the cool stuff about space is missing. Because all the planets and moons (indistinguishable from planets in NMS) have the same atmosphere density and gravity, I really don't feel like I'm visiting a new place. It takes 15 seconds to land and about 5 to leave a planet. I understand that NMS isn't meant to be a simulation game. I get that. But it's meant to be about exploration. What is the point of making some planets (or moons as they wishfully are calling them in-game) if they feel exactly the same as the big ones. Any liquid is always water, there are no clouds, no binary star systems, no gas giants, no meteor craters. The terrain variation goes from about 500 metres above to 50m below sea level. That's it. 
• The ship control scheme is abysmal. Don't remember having less fun flying a space ship in any other game. Space combat is pure and pointless pain. 
• The sentinels are dumb. They are easy to trick and really serve no purpose. They are mostly a minor inconvenience that doesn't need to be there. Maybe later in the game it's revealed that sentinels were a mistake and that it's all just trash. 
• Apart from the missing cool space stuff, there's a few inexplicable design decisions. For example, I don't really understand why at 32C your spacesuit's "thermal protection is falling". I grew up in a place where sometimes there was 40C in summer. I didn't have a spacesuit, I was wearing t-shirt and shorts. Same with your suit being able to withstand extreme radiation but suffering at hands of a -40C cold. Again, I've lived in a place with -30C in winter and I was wearing a warm coat. Similar strangeness happening with the inability to sell your old ships and use a star map while not in space. 
• Death in NMS is pointless. It's a minor inconvenience. You respawn at a space station, get back in your ship (which is somehow not blown up at all), fly back to where you died and pick up all your loot that the pirates who killed you (that's the only way I died so far) have failed to pick up. I mean, the game actually tells you that they are after that very loot but once they've killed you, they just leave. It feels more like teenage vandalism than space piracy. 
• There is no real skill required to play NMS. Which is fine. Obviously not every game needs to be skill based. But the obstacles on your path of exploration and discovery feel very artificial and inorganic - there to only delay you instead of offering any meaningful challenge that you will feel satisfied to have overcome. I'm always puzzled when the developers/publishers ask for my time after already having received my money. None of us gains anything from me wasting time on grind. I understand grind when it's monetized. It's ugly but it makes sense. When you already paid, it just feels like a cruel and unusual punishment.
•  As art, No Man's Sky is ultimately inoffensive. It's like an ok looking piece of furniture that doesn't make you feel anything besides perhaps doubt that you really needed it.

Apparently I used to write things on here.

There's some terrible stuff in there but I'm going to just leave it.

Magna Kiwi v0.3

Pristine Kiwi - A Post-Apocalypse Supersafe Holiday Club

Magna Kiwi

1. Pristine Kiwi is a loose community of professional amateurs who try to make the best of what remains of their shattered lives in once glorious nation state of Chernarus;

2. Membership is currently invite only (please refer to the Membership Appendix for details);

3. There is no strict moral agenda, ie any non-member (hereinafter referred to as a Richard) is a valid target for utlra violence, however:
    a. hate speech (including but not limited to: racism, sexism, nationalism, ableism and ageism), proselytizing, practice of the dark arts, belief in politicians, too much love for sports, unironic attitude towards conspiracy theories, unironic use of hashtags or playing to win constitutes sufficient grounds for excommunication;
    b. use of third party software to gain edge over other players or "hacking" in any other manner or the use of the in-game bugs and exploits to gain the said advantage constitutes sufficient grounds for excommunication;
    c. intentional murder of club members constitutes sufficient grounds for excommunication. Repeated friendly fire incidents will be investigated with the final judgement on the matter residing in the hands of the slain member. All conflicts between the club members that cannot be resolved through verbal means, shall be resolved through a Hollywood style quick-draw gunslinger duels (please refer to the Duel Appendix for details);

4. Every member is entitled to request backup in an event of finding themselves surrounded or outnumbered by hostile Richards or when discovering a hostile Richard in possession of a particularly rare item. When a backup request is issued (please refer to the Backup Request Appendix for details) all available members are obliged to spawn into the server and provide support as needed;

5. If one of the members discovers a pristine kiwi, it must be brought to the member currently serving as the The Mother Of Kiwi. If The Mother Of Kiwi is already in possession of a pristine kiwi, it must be offered to another member as a token of friendship. The recipient shall proceed to consume the pristine kiwi immediately with great appreciation. A pristine kiwi is the most valuable item we can offer each other. Rejecting an offer of pristine kiwi constitutes sufficient grounds for a duel. If the member who discovered a pristine kiwi is found to have consumed it themselves, they will be shot on sight and excommunicated.

6. The Mother Of Kiwi is a temporary and rotating position of great honour. This post is assigned by The Shadow Council Of Kiwi. While serving as the The Mother Of Kiwi, that member will only be referred to as Mother, relinquishing all other in-world or out-world cognomens or appellatives. Mother must always carry a pristine kiwi and protect it with their life. Other members must always protect Mother. If Mother dies next to you while you're still breathing, it is as if you had failed a thousand times. Sacrificing your life for Mother is a great honour. If Mother loses their pristine kiwi through a non-fatal accident, they immediately lose their position and shall never be The Mother Of Kiwi again. One cannot decline when offered the position of The Mother Of Kiwi;

7. We do not speak of The Shadow Council Of Kiwi;

8. In order to distinguish ourselves from the Richards of this world, we shall follow the Pristine Kiwi Dress Code of no military attire. Military attire shall be defined as:
    a. any items of clothing with a camouflage pattern;
    b. any tactical vests;
    c. any ballistic helmets;
    d. any military style boots (combat, jungle, etc.);

9. We aspire to be excellent to each other under all circumstances and at all times;

10. The contents of Manga Kiwi may be changed without any notice by the The Shadow Council Of Kiwi as The Council sees fit;

11. We do not speak of The Shadow Council Of Kiwi.

Membership Appendix 

Membership, as stated above, is currently invite only but as with all great things in life, there are other ways in. If you have seen the archives of the Pristine Kiwi adventures and feel like our ideological Venn diagrams overlap to a considerable degree and that we would enjoy each other's company, we will consider your candidacy. In order to do so, we will need a motivational letter (send one to slowbreakfast[that email sign]gmail[that punctuation mark]com) where you will tell us why you would like to join the Pristine Kiwis and why do you think we should accept you. You can do this in as many words as you like. If you clear this stage, you will reach the second, secret, stage of recruitment and receive further instructions.

Please take into consideration that you must be at least 18 years of age to become a Kiwi. If you do not receive a reply, it's probably because you were rejected for an undisclosed reason. Keep heart. You're more than welcome to re-apply after three months. However, if you receive no reply after the secret stage, your future applications will no longer be considered.

Please also keep in mind that your in-game skill level takes a backseat to your personality. A cool freshpawn bambi has a higher chance of getting through the eye of the needle than a square survivalist with 1000+ hours clocked in.

Duel Appendix 

As the name suggests, a Kiwi duel is strictly an affair between two individuals who have either come to a verbal impasse or would like to kill one another for any other reason, including but not limited to fun. Please keep in mind that the Kiwi duel is the only legitimate circumstance where you can attack a fellow Kiwi. Any other instances will be taken very seriously and are likely to lead to excommunication.

The challenger shall drop a pair of gloves in front of the challenged Kiwi and demand satisfaction. One cannot refuse the challenge to a duel.

The location, determined by the challenger, must be a straight and level segment of a road anywhere in Chernarus. It can be paved or dirt. The time of the day (and if applicable, weather) for the duel will also be determined by the challenger.

The weapons, chosen by the challenged, must be from one of the three options:
1) revolvers (no speed loaders);
2) semi-automatic pistols (no clips, only chambering);
3) any melee weapon.

The weapons must be identical. The duellists will stand from each other no closer than the distance which would render the other less than a 5th of the hight of the screen (when zoomed out). No protective clothing shall be worn during the duel.

At the start of the duel, the weapons of choice shall be holstered and assigned to the quick bar. A designated Kiwi will count down from five and fire a shot. This is when the duellists can draw their weapons and start moving. They can go anywhere they want without leaving the segment of the road and assume any stance. After the initial load has been spent (in case of a firefight) the duellists are free to reload.

The duel is always à l'outrance and deloping is prohibited.

If a duellist leaves the confines of the duel road or breaks the duel rules in any manner, they forfeit the duel and shall submit to the execution by the opponent.

Only one other Kiwi is required to be present at the duel - the one doing the countdown and enforcing the rules. Every other Kiwi at the site will either enjoy the show or provide security. Any physical interference with a duel from third parties is a grave offence and constitutes sufficient grounds for excommunication.

The duellists are free to choose a second. The seconds fulfil only a formal role of taking care of the duellists belongings and providing friendly advice and support. They cannot take the place of the duellist in the fight.

There is no material reward in winning a duel. If the weapons were borrowed, they will be returned to the owners in whatever state they are in. The winner has no claim on the loser's possessions. We are not savages who shed blood for each other's loot. Duels are in place for honour and fun.

With the completion of a duel, the conflict (if there was one) is exhausted.

Magna Kiwi v0.1

This is the first draft of the rules and guidelines of Pristine Kiwi.

Pristine Kiwi - A Post-Apocalypse Supersafe Holiday Club

Magna Kiwi

1. Pristine Kiwi is a loose community of professional amateurs who try to make the best of what remains of their shattered lives in once glorious nation state of Chernarus;

2. Membership is currently invite only (please refer to the Membership Appendix for details);

3. There is no strict moral agenda, ie any non-member (Hereinafter referred to as a Richard) is a valid target for utlra violence, however:
    a. hate speech (including but not limited to: racism, sexism, nationalism, ableism and ageism), proselytizing, practice of the dark arts, belief in politicians, too much love for sports, unironic attitude towards conspiracy theories, unironic use of hashtags or playing to win constitutes sufficient grounds for excommunication;
    b. use of third party software to gain edge over other players or "hacking" in any other manner or the use of the in-game bugs and exploits to gain the said advantage constitutes sufficient grounds for excommunication;
    c. intentional murder of club members constitutes sufficient grounds for excommunication. Repeated friendly fire incidents will be investigated with the final judgement on the matter residing in the hands of the slain member. All conflicts between the club members that cannot be resolved through verbal means, shall be resolved through a Hollywood style quick-draw gunslinger duels (please refer to the Duel Appendix for details);

4. Every member is entitled to request backup in an event of finding themselves surrounded or outnumbered by hostile Richards or when discovering a hostile Richard in possession of a particularly rare item. When a backup request is issued (please refer to the Backup Request Appendix for details) all available members are obliged to spawn into the server and provide support as needed;

5. If one of the members discovers a pristine kiwi, it must be brought to the member currently serving as the The Mother Of Kiwi. If The Mother Of Kiwi is already in possession of a pristine kiwi, it must be offered to another member as a token of friendship. The recipient shall proceed to consume the pristine kiwi immediately with great appreciation. A pristine kiwi is the most valuable item we can offer each other. Rejecting an offer of pristine kiwi constitutes sufficient grounds for a duel. If the member who discovered a pristine kiwi is found to have consumed it themselves, they will be shot on sight and excommunicated.

6. The Mother Of Kiwi is a temporary and rotating position of great honour. This post is assigned by The Shadow Council Of Kiwi. While serving as the The Mother Of Kiwi, that member will only be referred to as Mother, relinquishing all other in-world or out-world cognomens or appellatives. Mother must always carry a pristine kiwi and protect it with their life. Other members must always protect Mother. If Mother dies next to you while you're still breathing, it is as if you had failed a thousand times. Sacrificing your life for Mother is a great honour. If Mother loses their pristine kiwi through a non-fatal accident, they immediately lose their position and shall never be The Mother Of Kiwi ever again. One cannot decline when offered the position of The Mother Of Kiwi;

7. We do not speak of The Shadow Council Of Kiwi;

8. In order to distinguish ourselves from the Richards of this world, we shall follow the Pristine Kiwi Dress Code of no military attire. Military attire shall be defined as:
    a. any items of clothing with a camouflage pattern;
    b. any tactical vests;
    c. any ballistic helmets;
    d. any military style boots (combat, jungle, etc.);

9. We aspire to be excellent to each other under all circumstances and at all times;

10. The contents of Manga Kiwi may be changed without any notice by the The Shadow Council Of Kiwi as The Council sees fit;

11. We do not speak of The Shadow Council Of Kiwi.

The Wabi-sabi of Battlefield 4

I was playing BF4 in Conquest Large mode on Golmud Railway when I came across a beautiful emergent scene. I was heading in my buggy from Point Bravo to Point Delta when the smoke left by the recent enemy artillery strike cleared and right there in front of me, in the middle of the narrow pockmarked road, between the rows of war-torn houses stood a lonely white plastic lawn chair. It was exactly the one that comes to your mind when you think of a plastic lawn chair. It stood in the centre of the road as if someone has just been sitting there, observing the destruction around them, calmly, without a hint of haste, perhaps even enjoying the dust and smoke, not judging, only collecting data. They got up and left just before I turned the corner. Maybe their job was done or maybe the chair just stood their by itself having no need in anyone to occupy it, being complete and perfect in itself. And it was beautiful because it was random and it was random because it was beautiful because it was most mundane and most unusual at the same time.

I'm quite sure no one else saw it and and very soon it wouldn't be there any more. But that was ok. Somehow I didn't even feel too bad about probably getting killed by the helicopter looming in the air in front of me. Everything would be ok.

Unfortunately, I wasn't quick enough to either take a screenshot or hit the brakes before I smashed straight into the lonely white plastic lawn chair.

Ken Levine: Maker Of Games, Sayer Of Things

Look, before I say anything else, I want to make it clear that I have enjoyed playing several games that Ken had worked on, System Shock 2 and BioShock being the most prominent examples. Whatever good stuff in those games was Ken's fault - well done! As a gamer, I'm very grateful.

BUT

Here's an excerpt from the interview he gave to Rock Paper Shotgun:

RPS: Just touching on that idea of unreliable narration that Bioshock dwells on – games generally tend to be quite literal, don’t they? I’m trying to find the best way to express this, but I was thinking about how books or movies are so often tricks, or illusions, or sleight of hand, whereas games are so often just what they appear to be. Are you trying to avoid being over-literal in that way? Whether or not you regard the Bioshock games as successful, are they basically exploring the idea of making games a little less as they seem?

I can only boast of a tentative idea of what Jim is asking here - he is probably referring to how most games are literal rather then literary, you get what you see, no hidden meanings, no twists, no turns, no character development beyond levelling up and upgrades. Most games are CODMW2 SP rather then Fallout 2. But my apologies ladies and gentlemen, Imma let Ken here answer the question.

Levine: I have this friend from a D&D group in high school, he’s a writer named Andrew Mayer, and after we had both seen Inception he made a really interesting point about the ending. We were talking about that final scene where the camera cuts off before the spinning top either falls or doesn’t, and that leads the audience to wonder if DiCaprio’s in the real world or not in the real world… And Andrew says to me: “No, he’s in a movie.”

WHOA!

And I...

Hold up Ken. Hold up. Let me catch my breath here. You truthed me so hard, dog, I can't walk straight no more.

And I thought...

Wait up, wait up. Whew. What an emotional roller coaster! 

And I thought tha...

Just one more second. Let me interject here and express my gratitude that you and Andrew have finally solved the age old problem of "where exactly is DiCaprio". I think I speak for every citizen of the world, I speak from the bottom of my heart, my good Sirs, we can never repay you. Never! Please, continue.

And I thought that was really interesting.

I don’t know if that’s what the authorial intent of that scene was, but it’s interesting to notice that DiCaprio’s character is never either in the real world or in the Inception world, he’s in a movie.

Whoa! Here it is again!

If you step back from it, neither is more or less real than the other. But on an emotional level that’s not true for us, we think that the movie’s real world is more real than the dream world. Some things in fiction are more true to us than other things. In Bioshock Jack’s perception about himself is no more or less real once Andrew Ryan told him the truth about himself, because it’s all a lie. It’s all fiction. Except it’s not.

We just got schooled, son! Literature 101 right there. But wait, there's more. And it gets better.

I love that stuff. I have a bit of the post-modernist bent to me. I grew up loving Tom Stoppard, The Manchurian Candidate, Fight Club, Twelve Monkeys, Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind… you know, stuff like that where the form itself is part of the conversation, where identity is a question, where the form itself is a question. Some people are capable of doing that really elegantly, and I’ve always enjoyed that kind of stuff, because it’s not about twists per se, but about your perception of the experience and what you take from that.

:sigh: See, I think this is what you get when you let your kids study in liberal arts colleges. They will reduce the definition of post-modernism to plot twists. Ken studied drama back in the day and apparently wrote couple of screenplays which leads me to believe that he is either dumbing it down for us, so that we, the subhuman readership of RPS, will maybe understand the basic concept of literature or he actually thinks that he has a "post-modernist bent" that sets him apart from people who don't have that... bent.

I recently started paying more attention to people who are creative leads or design leads in different game developing companies and it sometimes seems like I'm reading interviews with the same guy. He has many incarnations but they all sound alike and say similar things. Above all, all his versions have the same aura, same air of "I am delivering a very interesting and valuable information instead of answering your question." And it's not, the information is not valuable. It's high school level stuff for $100K a year. I felt the same about Harvey Smith, most of whose tweets are about his meals, and I felt the same about Jake Solomon, who seems like a very good-natured guy who loves his family very much. They all seem to be nice, clean-cut, probably hard working, moderately capable managers. I wish game rags would spend more time on crazy/deranged/obsessed lower level designers and writers, people who actually make art assets for their games and don't say things like "I have a bit of the post-modernist bent".

Or maybe it's me and everything is just fine. Oh yeah, Ken, sorry about that, please finish your thought.

That’s why I love my friend’s observation about Inception, because there’s no more validity to one than the other. There is no spoon, right?

Why Chivalry Is Better Than War Of The Roses

Here are five reasons why Chiv is better than WotR.

1) Chiv makes the arrow in the knee meme obsolete.

Talk about composure in a high speed chase.

 2) Everyone in the game is very friendly.

Just wave back and keep walking.

3) No health and safety red tape to stifle your creativity.

[Almost wrote a penis joke here]. 

4) If you're ever bored (which is doubtful), you can deconstruct yourself by pressing F10.

[Almost wrote a Derrida joke here]. 

5) You're never alone. The omniscient Nipple In The Sky is always watching your every move. And judging you.

I kid you not, this is a permanent feature of every map. 

May your blunt weapon of choice be swifter than that of your opponents who are of dubious heritage and questionable social standing!

Jake? Jake?? JAAAAKEEEEE????

So this is why there are no patches for XCOM coming up.

With XCOM's release in his wake, Solomon is getting used to the slower pace in life. "It's weird when you're a developer, because oddly everything ends when the game comes out. You work like crazy, the game launches and then everything just stops. I'm mostly just sitting on my ass."

Well that's just swell. I guess no one's trying to fix the bugs then, eh? Nice.

The source.

Counting Counts

Had an amazing victory in XCOM: Enemy Unknown multiplayer. It was the kind of overcoming of odds that dreams are made of, the kind that lifts video games from the depth of misunderstanding and stereotypes, through the dark woods of annoying FPS players, to the state of an art form. I was not recording the game at the time nor have I made any screenshots so here's the low-tech report of what happened.



I was fielding a five member team - two snipers (hunters - main feature is shooting after moving) with scopes, two assaults (scouts - only run and gun) with stims and a sectoid named Kenny for obvious reasons. Snipers had laser sniper rifles and assaults had scatter laser. Kenny was wielding a plasma pistol and a lot of guts.

My near bus location meant lower ground and tougher choices. I was to go second. I went easy. Move everyone to the edge of their blue and overwatch. The snipers go left to the flowerbeds and the assaults hide behind the bus. Kenny goes boldly forward, fearless and ever watchful.

Enemy turn - nothing happens.

More careful movement on my side - to the blue and overwatch. The assaults are now in high cover along the right side of the bus. I briefly contemplate stimming them up but dismiss the idea for the fear of wasting the precious drugs on a timid and absentee enemy troops. Of course, I quickly regret it.

Enemy turn - a cyberdisc floats over from behind the statue. Kenny, crouching behind the park bench, takes a reaction shot and hits for 4 damage. As I think "well, Kenny's dead", the disc notices my snipers in the back and ignoring the dauntless sectoid takes one of them out. Blood, guts, broken dreams, a widow at home, kids without a father. But the disc is just on the other side of the bus, almost directly above Kenny. The assaults can probably reach him without as much as looking in the direction of run and gun. You will be avenged, sniper with random name, you will be avenged! That's when two medic looking troops, one in titan armour, show up. My assaults miss their reaction shots, the enemy troops are too far away for their scatter lasers. The medic with plasma rifle misses (praise be to The Holy RNG!) and the one with light plasma lands a 6 damage on rehab-clean and fragile body of my assault. Curse the unlucky stars!

The remaining sniper takes a headshot (what?) on the cyberdisc for the massive critical damage that leaves it with 2 bars. Kenny misses on cyber. That's ok, everything is still manageable. The wounded assault runs into the bus and does drugs behind the high cover of the driver's seat partition. The healthy soldier moves a couple of steps down the side of the bus to another high cover spot and also does drugs.

Enemy turn - the cyberdisc turns another sniper into a corpse. Another life in shatters. More blood becoming dust. The enemy rejoice. The medic with the plasma rifle and titan armour dashes to the front of the bus. The other one takes a shot at Kenny and misses. "Shot wide!" she must be reporting to her handlers.

Kenny is as calm as ever. The kamikaze scout knows the price of victory better then any of his human partners. What do they know. They don't hear other people's dreams at night when all they want is to fall asleep. His psychic abilities may not be as good as those of the sectoid commander but he can read anyone's emotions like the first giant letters on the optician's chart. He knows about the resentment his colleagues sometimes feel towards him, he knows about the unease his otherness brings into every room he enters. He would rather not know but it's not his fault that humans spill out their brainwaves like so much diarrhoea. But more than anything, above anything, Kenny knows loyalty. He takes down the hovering cyberdisc - explosion rocks the Boulevard.

The healthy assault goes into run and gun and runs to the other side of the map as far as he can go, which is right behind the other enemy medic. The shot isn't critical, the medic lives to take revenge. The wounded but no less drugged up assault runs down to the edge of the bus and takes a shot at the titan. 5 damage, hardly enough for anything. Things are not going our way. Drugs don't fail us now! But they do. Kind of.

Enemy turn - the titan soldier moves behind the wounded assault and pumps his body full of plasma. Stims cannot save him against a weapon so powerful with only 4 health remaining. Hopefully he dies without feeling any pain. As his eyes close for the last time I lose sight of the titan. The other medic does 3 damage on the ex-healthy assault and the turn is ours.

My remaining assault takes out the weaker medic. Kenny stays put and goes into overwatch.

Enemy turn - the titan shows his face at the corner of the bus, and takes a shot at Kenny, misses.

"That's bullshit! I had 87%," writes the enemy in the chat.

Kenny suppresses and the assault dashes to the front of the police car, closer to the titan. 7 health remaining and jonesing for the fix that is not going to come.

Enemy turn - to shake off the aim penalty, the titan moves to the other side of the same car that my assault is using for cover. Kenny misses his suppression shot but the titan doesn't. Yellow alien blood everywhere and Kenny goes down in history as the only sectoid with balls.

Wounded and all out of drugs, the lone assault moves up to the enemy, takes a shot and lands another 5. The titan lives with more than enough health to potentially kill my assault twice. With a gun that big at that distance it would be very easy to send him flying in bloody pieces to the same tarmac that his ex-team mates are slowly but surely rotting on. It would hardly take more than pulling of the stupid trigger and releasing of the stupid plasma onto the stupid flesh. But there is something that I know that he only now may be realising. I've been counting, you see. And that last shot that took out Kenny, that was shot number 4. That gun is emptier than the heart of a sectopod. He only brought along a normal pistol, so that's not an option. He will reposition as far as he can and reload.

Enemy move - and so he does. Fully loaded behind the adjacent car but no overwatch to protect him.

I run and gun the assault right next to him. Two of them crouching behind the same car like two kids hiding from grown-ups. My kid has only enough energy for one shot in his scatter laser and only a critical hit will do. 5 or 6 of damage will leave him flanked and without ammo against certain death. He raises his gun at the face of the titan. This is for you Kenny.

From Nigeria to Japan, With Love

It seems like it was only yesterday that I received my last communication from His Majesty The Nigerian Prince. Today I get this message (posted below verbatim). Is there a pretender to the Throne? Surely, this means war!

I am sorry to encroach into your privacy in this manner, I found you listed in the Trade Centre Chambers of Commerce directory here in Japan, I find it pleasurable to offer you my partnership in business, I only pray at this time that your address is still valid. I want to solicit your attention to receive cash on my behalf. The purpose of my contacting you is because my status would not permit me to do this alone.Respond If interested with Your full*names,Age,and*Location.
Regards,Hidekazu

This is one of the image results you get if you search for Hidekazu:

Seems like the right one. 

Don't Small The Sweat Things

After huge popular demand, here's my to do list for today:

• cancel BFI
• cancel SS
• transfer £
• write stuff for X-Files
• finish FTL run
• use the codes
• check Desura deals
• buy webcam 
• kill spider if it moves 

Most of that is now accomplished. As a reword for my efforts, you can watch me play games 

or you can watch this instead

Bye!