Fill Blog Wednesday!

I've been extremely busy with work which has been spilling into over time, and from the second I get home right up until his bed time my son has been absorbing my time. He turned 18 months as of May 25th, but his development is moving along at an insane pace. The kid's running, sprinting and his latest trick is the ability to open doors, which has of course led to an escalation in out-of-reach locks for the front door. His ability to understand is amazing, considering he's still focused on speaking single words, but his selective hearing when it comes to "doing what I want to do" vs. "what mom and dad are telling me not to do" is amazing. He's a stubborn and determined little fellow.

Marcus has decided he will drive

Marcus balancing on his rocking horse (yes, I dragged him off immediately after snapping the photo)

Marcus meets the candy bear in Old Town (and tries to free him from his shackles)

So I haven't built up a ton of blog content lately (I usually have a variety of pre-loaded blogs to cover for weeks I'm too busy to stay abreast of things). Hopefully this weekend I'll have some time for updates, but for now another rare "family blog."

On gaming news....the only real news is that Ultimate Campaigns for Pathfinder should arrive at my FLGS this week, and it sounds really neat. I'll talk about it more if it looks like the book has a broad universal appeal to more than just Pathfinder fans (I have a feeling it does, we'll see).

Also, for reasons not entirely clear Guild Wars 2 sucked me in finally and I think I'll be focusing heavily on that for a while. Other than that....some more graphic novel reviews on some of the other New 52 DC universe books I've picked up, and maybe another movie review or two. I may even get back to writing about games, still have some partially completed content I was working on for B/X D&D as well as Magic World.

Till then....back to work for me!

Post-Mayan Non-Apocalyptic Blog Day

Okay, it's a week late but I just wanted to say, "hey, look, that was a whole lot of nothing. Hope some film makers and book writers got a decent profit out of that one." So I guess the next big event...which ironically is actually something worth noting, unlike the entirely fictitious non-event we just breezed through, will be the 2037 near-miss from asteroid Apophis. I predict many more book and movie deals in the future, culminating in a more interesting level of mass hysteria if the History Channel gets lucky.

I've taken a break from blogging for the last week or so. In a nice change of pace I've been relaxing at home, but that's only half true; it's been a bear of a week at my place of employment as I do an office move, which has been an interesting and time-consuming task, with a lot of overtime in the mix. Hopefully by next week things will be back on track, though.

I did manage two minor accomplishments this week: I watched the movie Salt, and I finally got finishing achievements on all campaigns in Left 4 Dead 2. I don't feel a lot of compulsion to continue playing L4D2, which means I need to find a new game to play for the Holidays (it's been a tradition now for a couple years that I played marathon L4D and L4D2 campaigns during all major holidays). Hmmm....I think I might start focusing more on Arma II soon (although I am still holding off on Day Z until the official edition comes out next year).



I also watched Salt, the Angelina Jolie action film from a year or two back. It was actually a lot of fun, and I got to see the extended edition, which means I have no idea what was cut from the theatrical release but it held together just fine. The film did an admirable job of focusing on a character (Evelina Salt) without necessarily giving away her character's motivations. It had a few "unpleasant" moments in it, the sort of stuff that European and Hong Kong cinema don't bat an eyelash at, but which most Summer time American audiences cringe over, so I wonder how well it did when it was fresh on the scene.

Anyway, it was a good movie, had fewer "suspension of disbelief being tested" moments than is normal for an Angelina Jolie movie, and a compelling narrative with more than a few plot twists. Worth watching if you are into action and espionage films.

Amidst all of this, I would like to thank my son, Marcus, for being such a good sport while dad tried to watch a movie, as he only made a mad dash to turn the TV off once, and otherwise played with his ball with dad, the cats, and anything he could bounce it off of for close to an hour and a half before mom arrived to put him to bed.

Achievement Unlocked: Level 1!

My kid turned 1 year old on Sunday. He had a big party with relatives on Saturday, and of course got to be a stinker to his heart's content on Sunday. He's running...sprinting!....all over the place, he's inventing his own little language he speaks to his stuffed animals, and he's obsessed with all things electronic, or which have lights or make noises, or pretty much anything that Mom and Dad are holding because obviously those are important! And so he must have them.

Marcus in clothes for an 18 month old that just fit!

Anyway, not much productivity this weekend, otherwise! I can report only that for some reason I've gotten really obsessed with Diablo III and that sort of took me by surprise but I am enjoying it. This prompted me to spend more time with Torchlight II, which is also good, but I dunno....except for the always-online bit, Diablo III appeals to me more than Torchlight II's more cartoony aesthetic. That said, Torchlight II has a lot going for it, with more character customization than just class/gender, and a very open world. Diablo III, on the other hand, has an extremely engaging storyline for a game of this type, and polished game play so smooth and efficient it's eerie.

I started a barbarian warrioress on hardcore (normal mode)...it's not too risky, so far, but definitely adds an element of tension to the game! Do not even attempt to play hadcore until the kid is asleep, lemme tell ya!

I also watched The Expendables (at last) on DVD Saturday night. Ultra Mini Review: it wasn't all that exciting or original (surprise), although the later action scenes, when we got to them, were top notch. The  rest of it was a boiler-plate safe, run of the mill action hero plot line lifted straight from the eighties and nineties action film genre, right on down to some petty South American dictator, a CIA agent gone rogue (substituting for Soviets, I guess) and a mess of tough guy heroes who were in their prime in the eighties and are, if this film is to be believed, still in the thick of it as they all hit their geriatric years. Schwarzenegger and Bruce Willis had bit part cameos just to say they were in the film, and I think the only saving grace I found was Statham, who remains my favorite action hero of the current crop. Jet Li had a couple decent moments, too.

More later!

If I had to rate it, I'd give the action scenes an A+ (they really were good), and the res t of the film a D for derivative--but with the caveat that Statham and Stallone both made this movie a lot more fun to watch than it otherwise would have been!

False Leads, Pleasant Surprises and Dismal Failures

Just a few updates today (amidst the ongoing Thirty One Days of Night....I have 16 days of reviews preloaded so far, 14 more to go!).

First: two movies in a row that I thought would make good fodder for the "Thirty One Days of Horror" event did not pan out. I watched Whiteout first, a movie that was reccommended to me as a good horror flick that was "just like The Thing." Mhmmm. Somebody in my network just lost some credibility points! Whiteout was a good movie, but it was only like The Thing in the same way that District 9 was just like Hotel Rwanda. Whiteout was, in fact, a thriller and a sort of spy/suspense/mystery genre film, using Antarctica as its gimmick location. Fun movie, not suitable for the horror review fest I've got going.

The other movie was Super 8, which my wife really wanted to see and even sat down to watch with me. It was simultaneously good and bad, and the obvious effort to pander to the 80's adventure genre was actually off-putting to me. Yes, there's the spunky kid hero and his comedically distinct companions. There's the young female lead that swoons many hearts. There's the embittered dad who has a legacy to live down to while trying to repair the rift with his son. There's the 80's style E.T. monster upgrades for the 21st century and then clouded by so many J.J. Abrams-isms that if you're not intensely annoyed at this movie by the end then you have a stronger constitution than I. I think I liked J.J. Abrams better before I realized he was a one-trick pony.

Game tonight! I am working on generating excitement. I am trying to figure out why I have been less and less motivated to play RPGs lately. I think a chunk of it has to do with my son, honestly. The desire to play Pathfinder tonight is crippled by my much greater desire to go home and see my kid, help him learn and grow. Fatherhood seems to be turning into a much greater reward for me than anything else. It's nice when Real Life puts it all into perspective.

 
I got Resident Evil 6 last night. In a week or two you will see a review of RE 5, and I will hopefully follow up with a review of this one (or a review-in-progress, at least). I'll give you four tidbits for now:

1. If Capcom wants to make movies, they should just make movies, mkay? (Oh wait, they do!)

2. The Leon campaign so far is better than reviewers are giving the game credit for. In fairness to the reviewers I think most of them are saying the Leon campaign is good, and its the next two that have issues, though.

3. Many issues I had with RE 5 have been fixed or altered in RE 6.

4. RE 6 has split-screen co-op. That alone bumps it up a notch over other titles this year.

Aside from all that, there are a number of other new features in RE 6 that I like, but I'll talk more about it once I'm further in, only got a couple hours down so far.



Finally: still plowing through Rift but the game suddenly upped the ante on me with a more methodical gain to the XP pacing. This is massively impacting the odds I'll get anywhere near level 50 by the time Storm Legion arrives. GAAAAAAHHHHH!



That outfit looks really uncomfortable and not at all practical. Wouldn't it pinch?????

Charisma 18!

Some new pics of my son, who is now 8 and a half months old. This, folks, is the very definition of Charisma 18!

dinner time!

playing with the kitty toy

I see that camera

gimme dat camera

loves to watch Mass Effect

what's this on my face?

Hmmmm!

Watching the Mass Effect

Showing off!

My wife's cousin Jessie has a real talent for photography, and I couldn't resist showing off a few of the pics she took this week while my wife and son were down visiting her (I am missing from the pics, sorry! Was busy working my butt off this week, thanks to a big promotion).

Why am I in this bowl???

Mom and Son

In case you're wondering, yes that is a tattoo of the Tzimisce vampire Sascha Vykos from Vampire: the Masquerade. How cool is that?!?!?!?!

Home! And then there were three (plus a lot of cats and fishes)

We're home. This was quite the ordeal but it went surprisingly well. Marcus is a real trooper, and his mom even more so. I'm not sure who had it worse: the person who had to push a football through a golf-ball sized exit, or the person who got to be a football, but they have both come out ahead and are now sleeping soundly (or chewing on binkies) upstairs.

Despite being busy with family, my blog has many episodes programmed ahead, so you shouldn't see any interruption of this for some time....part of the advantage of having so much content already worked up!

Anyway, just wanted to provide that family update. Hope you all have as good a holiday season as my family is.