Dear Dollhouse,

What the FUCK?! I now have to rethink everything that has ever happened on you.

Yours in a state of extreme confusion,
Daryl

The weather has gone mad. I mean, I know I live in Scotland and the winter is never exactly balmy, but come on. It's currently -12 degrees outside. The car park opposite my house is a big sheet of ice that's been solid for about two weeks. Occasionally it warms up enough for a new dusting of snow to get deposited everywhere. Boing Boing informs me that the freakishly low temperatures, even for Scottish standards, are a result of unusual activity in the Gulf stream which has caused it to divert to fucking Greenland. That's right folks, the Gulf stream itself has abandoned us and dumped some nice warm air on the country with the lowest population density in the world. Fantastic.

While I've been cooped up avoiding the cold, I finished off Assassin's Creed 2. It's a masterclass in how to do a sequel- it fixes basically every fault and improves on the good parts of the original game. Ezio is a far more engaging character than Altair, and he controls even more smoothly than his predecessor did. The combat allows for a lot more invention this time round- it's still possible to sit back and counter everyone to death, but that's dull. I was having a great time running from combat, climbing a little, then turning and air assassinating two guards at once, among plenty of other moves. The new hidden blade upgrades, the economy and the significant reduction in collectible hunting are all incredibly welcome. It's a little too easy to make money with the villa, but it's still great to be able to hire thieves, mercs and courtesans to aid you. The stealth mechanics make a lot more sense too. There's no more weak scholar mechanic- instead you can blend in with any group of pedestrians, including your hired followers. Coupled with the smoke bombs, this makes for one of the most engaging takes on the stealth genre yet.

Though the first half of the game is essentially an extended tutorial, it's never dull and new moves are handed out at just the right pace to keep things seeming fresh and interesting. There's a real sense of Ezio growing into his role as ultimate-stabbity-death-man, bolstered by a much more personal and interesting plot than the first game. There's still enough crazy conspiracy stuff to match even the silliest Dan Brown novel, but here it seems oddly compelling. The ending in particular left me hungry for more, unlike the fizzle at the end of AC1.

In short- certainly the most improved sequel I've ever played, and quite possibly the game of the year.

I made it out of the house once this week, to see Avatar. In terms of plot it was almost entirely unoriginal, but visually it's like nothing else. Both the tech that humanity employed and the ecosystem of Pandora were masterfully created. I particularly loved the symbiotic links between the many creatures of the planet, and the way that they avoided getting all exposition-y. It was just accepted and I found that very cool somehow. Same with the "Earth is dead" one liner. I thought some of the supporting cast were a little weak, but the core performances were excellent. Sam Worthington really dazzled, and Sigourney Weaver is ever reliable. For my money, this film surpassed my expectations in a huge way, just by living up to its own hype. It may be a little heavy handed in its environmentalist message, but as an exercise in world building it's unsurpassed in the sci-fi movie canon. My new favourite James Cameron film. (Mark, if you're reading, see this in 3D before it leaves the cinema. Unbelievably good.)

A very happy new year to all of you. I hope the 2010s (I still haven't come to terms with 'the noughties' as a name for the last decade, let alone found a name I like for this one) treat you well.

I'm not a huge fan of New Year celebrations, so after a meal with the family I spent last night doing a TV marathon with John and my brother. Six episodes of HIMYM and four of Castle. It was a great night.

( Books 32-39 )
Totals for the Year
Books read: 39
Fiction novels: 21
Short story collections: 2
Non-fiction: 1
Graphic novels: 15

Disappointingly, I didn't finish my 50 book challenge. Not even close, really, given how many graphic novels I read. That's mainly down to a summer spent mostly on games and TV. I initially wrote 'squandered on' there, but that doesn't seem right. I thoroughly enjoyed the summer, and I did significantly increase the number of books I read over last year, so I'm calling it a win overall. That said, I'm going to try again next year and actually be more disciplined with it. 50 is easily achievable if I put my mind to it. Plus, I have a two week holiday in Germany this summer which should easily give me time to read 10 to 15 books. So no excuses, self, if you fail to complete the challenge next year.

Best of the year: Pandaemonium by Christopher Brookmyre and Little Brother by Cory Doctorow
Worst: Tough one- I liked pretty much everything I read this year. If I had to choose, I'd say Grave Peril by Jim Butcher was the worst of the Dresden novels I ploughed through. Entertaining enough, but not especially memorable. (My reading habits are so unadventurous- I need to get away from the genres and authors I know I love more.)

Final Reading List

First up, happy birthday to starbuck92 and iulieki :) Hope you both have great days.

The Christmas period has been nice and relaxed. As usual with my giant extended family, I did pretty well on the present front. Ended up with Borderlands and Modern Warfare 2 on the PC, and Assassin's Creed 2 on the 360. Both Borderlands and AC are late contenders for my game of the year. I was particularly surprised by Borderlands- it got solid 80%ish reviews when it came out, but I really feel it's better than that. Brad and I have been playing co-op and it's one of the best games I've played in ages. Essentially it's Diablo translated into FPS form, and given a Firefly-esque space western coat of paint. The art style is gorgeous, and the gunplay deeply satisfying.

I also got a few movies (Star Trek yay), some books, a couple of TV things and some cash. Particularly pleased with Supernatural season 4, which worked out well because I finished s3 on Christmas eve. 3 episodes into season 4 now, and I love the Mary Winchester backstory and Castiel. Angels are cool.

On Christmas day I did basically the same as last year- went out for Chinese food with the family, then back to my grandparents' house to swap presents. There's a sweet spot at my family gatherings, before everyone gets too drunk, when they're hilarious and good fun. Inevitably things go on too long, and someone decides it's a good idea to let my drunk uncle take over the music, and then it descends into crap. Brad and I took shelter with one of my cousins upstairs until the parents got sleepy enough to decide they were going home. After we got home, stayed up til 4am playing Borderlands.

Boxing day was very lazy. Watched Star Trek, played games, ate too much, and didn't leave the house. On Sunday John and I watched some ER and also the movie 21, which was alright. It made a half way decent attempt at including some maths, so I give it points for that. Cauchy even got a mention. Family came round for dinner in the evening.

Went to see Sherlock Holmes yesterday. On one hand, Downey Jr and Law were fantastic and gave a convincing account of the Holmes-Watson friendship. The action was decent, some of the shots of London were lovely, and I particularly loved Holmes' plans to take out opponents. On the other hand, the plot was too simple, the pacing was strange, and all of Rachel McAdams' scenes felt tacked on. Half the stuff that was in the trailer didn't make it to the final film. On the whole I liked it, but it was too restricted. I think the sequel could be excellent, now that they've introduced the characters for the new audience and finished teasing Moriarty.

More laziness today. Some SPN, some Borderlands, and a little reading. Which reminds me, I have a backlog of book reviews to post. Really should get round to that.

As I type this, it's one minute away from being Christmas. Except not really, 'cause it never feels like Christmas until I've been to bed and woken up again. Anyway, just want to wish you guys a very happy Christmas. Hope everyone who celebrates it has a great day.

I'll attempt to do some year in review posts over the course of the next week, though video game catch up may take precedence.

Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night.

Uni is now done for Christmas. The deadlines piled up a bit in the last week, which is probably my fault for not spreading out my work more, but I got there okay. I thought I might have left my essay a little late, but once I started reading around the subject and writing it I found myself getting really interested and had no trouble getting it done. After the last handins yesterday I went out for dinner with Clare, Amanda, Xuan-Linh and Clare's boyfriend Al. After a somewhat stressful week, it was great to just chill out and chat. Afterwards we went to a wee coffee shop on Woodlands Road and enjoyed more of the same. I have some coursework I'll need to work on over the holidays, but that can wait til after Christmas. This week I plan to finish Dragon Age, catch up on some reading and generally do as little of consequence as possible. Oh, and tomorrow we're doing the annual Lord of the Rings extended edition marathon, which will properly trip my brain into Christmas mode. Good times :) With one small exception my Christmas shopping is done, which has to be some kind of record in terms of my organisational skills. Still need to wrap stuff but whatever.

It snowed here on Thursday and again today! Admittedly it was pretty shit snow, but it's always a nice surprise. It was kinda cute actually, a lot of the people on my course come from parts of the world where they'd never seen snow before and so they all ran outside the Boyd Orr building and marvelled.

Some other points:
-- I really do love this campaign to get Rage to Christmas number one. Although I already own the CD, I bought the single from itunes and I hope the British part of my flist has done the same :)
-- University Challenge on Monday had a question on lolcats. Hearing Paxman say 'I can haz cheezburger' was glorious.
-- Went to the Park Mains Christmas concert on Wednesday. I was flashing back quite heavily to high school.
-- Regarding the Dexter finale: FFFFFFFFUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU

As if I wasn't stoked enough for Mass Effect 2 already, Bioware released the cast list the other day and it's seriously impressive. For the BSG fans in the audience, Tricia Helfer is the voice of the new AI on the Normandy and Michael Hogan is some kind of quest NPC. Trek fans get Michael Dorn as a Krogan dude. For the Browncoats and Chuck fans, Adam Baldwin (plus Yvonne Strahovski as a Cerberus operative for added Chuck goodness). For fans of people who are just plain awesome, there's Carrie Ann Moss, Simon Templeman and no less than Martin Sheen as Illusive Man, Mass Effect's answer to the CSM. Plus, of course, Seth Green and the Arbiter (err... Keith David) are back in their roles from the first game. Captain Anderson appears to be a Councilor these days, which is cool.

They still haven't revealed the voice actors for most of the playable characters, though I guess those names won't be quite so famous for budget reasons.

Anyway, I have to go back to my database coursework. Just kill me now...

I know, I know, my update fail continues. Uni is keeping me incredibly busy right now. I finish up for Christmas next Friday, and between now and then my deadlines include a programming assessed exercise, a 2000 word essay on the halting problem, the initial design for my programming project, a fairly large database design and implementation, and a requirements capture exercise. It's all interesting stuff, but it means I spend so long in front of the computer every day that I can barely face playing Dragon Age- I'm crawling through it in hour long bursts. At this point I'm really looking forward to chilling out and playing games over Christmas. I'll still have some coursework to do, but it won't be quite so intense.

John and I went to see Regina Spektor last week. Although actually the main attraction for us was Jenny Owen Youngs, who was playing support. We got to meet Jenny afterwards, and she was basically awesome. I got a fist bump, which pleased me no end :D Regina was excellent as ever- her vocal abilities never fail to amaze. During Dance Anthem of the 80s, a girl in the crowd tried to toss a t-shirt she had made for Regina on to the stage. To what I can only imagine was her unrelenting horror, the t-shirt hit Regina square in the face, abruptly stopping the song. Cue much boo-ing from the crowd, and a security person running over to try and eject the girl. Regina was very classy about it, telling everyone to be cool and showing off the shirt. It was a great night, even though John parked in fucking banjo country and we nearly froze getting back to the car afterwards.

Stargate Universe had its first truly great episode this week, just in time for the hiatus. That twist was some frankly amazing television and I find myself energized for the back half of the season in a way that I wasn't at all before. Whether the show can stand up to that is of course an entirely separate matter, but as it stands Justice was one of the most surprising (and surprisingly good) episodes of any show this season.

Over in the good-but-not-surprisingly-so camp is Dexter. I had some initial concerns about John Lithgow's casting as Trinity- he has a well know propensity for ham, after all- but his performance quickly assuaged my doubts and this season has been incredibly strong. I'm not entirely sure how they managed to make the show even more tense than previous seasons, but it's definitely happened. Thanksgiving at Arthur's the other week was just crazy. I haven't seen the most recent episode yet, but from the promos it promises to be totally nuts. The show can't possibly go on like this forever- there's a shark just waiting to be jumped- but while the writers are still in control it's fantastic to behold.

Joss Whedon has a rare gift for casting. He plucks actors from obscurity and extracts from them unbelievably good performances. Increasingly I think Enver Gjokaj may be his greatest find yet. Is there anything the man can't play? In last week's two stellar Dollhouse episodes, his latest imprint was probably my highlight. Don't get me wrong, Summer Glau was pretty damn amazing as well, but her character was involved in a Caroline-subplot and the mere mention of Caroline inspires a narcoleptic response in me. The general quality of Dollhouse has been all over the place over the course of its season and a half, but if they can churn out another 7 episodes like the ones we had last week, I think my final opinion will be that's it one of the better things Joss has ever done.

Change of pace. ( Music meme! )


In conclusion, the movie of my life has a fucking weird soundtrack.

Haven't posted in weeks- I fail at the whole LJ thing. Between coursework, tv and Dragon Age I haven't had the time. The masters has been something of a system shock in terms of the workload. I went from maths, where the entire degree was based on the finals, to this, where I have 1 or 2 assessed exercises to hand in every week for the last 5 weeks of terms. They've got me writing essays- until the other week, I hadn't done one of those for over four years. It's a pretty intense schedule, but I have to say I'm loving it. I'm so interested in the material, and learning to program is a great experience. In stark contrast to my undergrad degree, I really feel like I've made the right choice with this course. It's a good feeling.

The other main cause for my LJ neglect is Dragon Age: Origins. I can't stress enough how awesome this game is. It's been billed the spiritual successor to Baldur's Gate 2, and that's a role it fills ably. The combat, the dialogue, the setting, the humour, and especially the characters- all are pitch perfect. I've racked up about 35 hours so far, and at a guess I'm probably half way into the main storyline. It's a positively huge game and Ferelden is an amazingly fleshed out game world. The extent of the lore that the writers have created is staggering, and I'll quite happily spend ages just reading through codex entries. Bioware are the only developer I can think of who put this kind of detail in their fiction, and I'm deeply grateful for it. It makes my inner nerd very happy.

I also got Left 4 Dead 2 last week, which is huge fun. It's essentially more of the same, but it polishes the mechanics from the first game and vastly improves the level design. The storm at the end of Hard Rain really has to be played to be believed. The melee weapons are incredibly satisfying, the increased gore is hilarious and the new special Infected add much needed variety to versus mode. The only downside to the whole package is Rochelle. A lot of the fun in the first game came from the banter between the survivors, who all had great personalities. This is repeated in the sequel with Ellis, Coach and Nick but Rochelle's personality is strangely lacking. In fact, her whole characterisation is basically her Depeche Mode shirt. An odd failing on Valve's part.

Sticking with games for a little longer, I joined the uni LAN society during Fresher's Week, and last weekend my PC and I attended our first LAN. Turnout wasn't amazing- we never got more than 9 players in any one game- but I had a great time. There's something deeply satisfying about seeing the reaction of people just as your zombie begins to tear them apart. (That probably makes me a bad person, but whatever.) I played some new games, made some new friends and generally had an awesome weekend. The next one is in January, and I'm really looking forward to it.

In order to stop this entry getting out of hand, I'll just quickly summarise some other stuff that's happened since my last update:
-- Went to see Eddie Izzard. He was hilarious, as you'd expect.
-- Getting towards the end of Supernatural season 2. How was I not watching this show before? It is genius. My brother has commented that every episode can basically be summed up as: cold open - "I HUNT DEMONS!" - "MAN LOVE!" He's right, but neither of us care very much. It's so much fun.
-- Caught up to Stargate: Universe. 'Time' was a cathartic viewing experience- Chloe not only died in the episode, she died twice. Of course, it was all rendered moot by the next episode but we still got to see an alien creature chew its way right through her. Good times. (Is anyone else watching this show? If so, do you also feel like Chloe is the worst character in the history of the world? Damn she's annoying me.)
-- Went to see The Men Who Stare At Goats. It was excellent, except that Ewan McGregor's American accent was atrocious. The whole Jedi thing threatened to become very, very meta, but they didn't get too nudge-nudge-wink-wink with it thankfully.
-- Haven't bought Modern Warfare 2 or Assassin's Creed 2 yet. Can't afford them :( Will have to wait til Christmas I guess.
-- Lastly, I have a bunch of google wave invites going spare if anyone wants one. Comment or PM me with your email if you do.

You know, I really am loving Supernatural. It's so much smarter than I ever gave it credit for, by and large. But seriously, did they have to go and do the 'vampires who are good while humans are the real monsters' episode? Really, guys? Even my 14 year old brother called that one as being clichéd. I'm currently three episodes into season 2. Why would they do that to JDM? He was my favourite thing about the show by a considerable margin.

There's a trailer out for the Prince of Persia movie, which I have conflicting feelings about. Visually it looks great, but in the space of two minutes they manage to span the spectrum of dialog, from quite charming to cringeworthy. Jake Gyllenhaal seems fairly apt to play the Prince from what's shown there. A minor gripe though- it doesn't seem right giving the Prince a name. Layer Cake, and I'm sure other films, have shown us that your protagonist doesn't need a name for the script to work, so I'm not sure why the writers felt is was necessary here. Oh, and what's with that Assassin's Creed dive at the beginning of the trailer?

Day off uni tomorrow. Result.

I'm at something of a loose end just now. Sure, there's coursework I could theoretically be doing, but I'd planned this evening around playing the Left 4 Dead 2 demo. It was supposed to drop last night, but got pushed back to the early hours of this morning. That's basically par for the course where Valve releases are concerned, but the pushed back time has now been pushed back once again. Now the only indication we have is that it will be released sometime today. I probably wouldn't mind so much if the 360 version of the demo hadn't come out yesterday, right on time. That's just poor.

In the realm of game demos that were released on time, I spent a couple of hours last night playing the demo for Torchlight. Developed by a team consisting of members who in the past have worked on Diablo 2, Mythos and Hellgate: London, this is a game very much in the tradition of hack'n'slash. It plays in a very similar way to Diablo 2, but with a lot of polish on that game's mechanics. There are three classes, of which I've played only one, the Barbarian. Err, wait, the Destroyer. He's a lot of fun to play, dual wielding large weapons and squashing hordes of little dudes with impunity. The need for potion spam isn't so pronounced as it was in Diablo, which is a welcome change. The graphics aren't amazing on a technical level, but they're clean, colorful and have a hint of Pixar influence in the models. If Pixar went in for dungeon crawling cartoon gorefests. Single player only at the moment, with plans to add an online multiplayer component at a later date. I'm quite taken with the demo- not least because of its impressive length- and at £15 I'm definitely thinking about buying the full game. It stands a decent chance of getting lost in the flood of Christmas releases I've been thinking about getting though. Modern Warfare 2, L4D2, Dragon Age, Assassin's Creed 2 (and probably others I've forgotten) are all on the cards. I so don't have enough time or money for this month.

Speaking of Dragon Age, I urge to take a look at the release trailer. Pay special attention to the bit where Morrigan does a flip then turns into a giant spider to kill the orc dudes. Badass, no? For added awesome, Morrigan is being voiced by Claudia Black.

I have to give a presentation next Monday on a famous computing paper from the 80s. It opens with the line "Of all the monsters that fill the nightmares of our folklore, none terrify more than werewolves, because they transform unexpectedly from the familiar into horrors. For these, one seeks bullets of silver that can magically lay them to rest." This is a paper on software engineering. I have to say, that's the best opening I've ever seen for an academic piece of writing.

Never thought I'd say this, but I find myself in the curious position of being impressed with Microsoft's customer service. Despite the quoted two to three week turnaround time, my xbox was delivered back to my house almost exactly a week after it was first picked up by UPS. Well, in actual fact they just replaced the console entirely, but I kept my old hard drive so that doesn't bother me. They even threw in a free month on xbox live. I'm pretty pleased with this result. (Of course, it's occured to me that maybe they only quote the 2-3 weeks so that people will be impressed when they get their console back much sooner. But that would be cynical.) In the week it's been gone, and the week before that where it was just broken, I've built up quite a backlog of tv. That's this weekend planned then.

Something which I forgot to mention in my past couple of entries- my friend Mark recently left on his nine month tour of the world. After a couple of weeks in Finland, he's now chilling in Ecuador. He's blogging his experiences, and I have to say I'm pretty jealous so far :D His being gone is somewhat weird, and it effectively reduces the group of friends I see outside of uni to, well, John. I'm really going to miss him.

Before Mark left, we'd been playing a few games of Arkham Horror, a coop board game based on the Cthulhu mythos. It's a lot of fun to play and led to some truly hilarious situations. It's not exactly an RPG but it's something of an entry point into the RP mindset, and it's got my brother interested in playing D&D. Except with Mark gone we're a little stuck for numbers- a DM and two players does not a gaming group make. That's kind of a bummer. I haven't played in five or six years, and I'd quite like to get into 4th edition and try out my DM skills again. I think it'd be good for Brad, too, in that it'd offer a way to develop his video game stunted imagination. Meh. Must make new friends.

By the way- kill all sons of bitches. DO WANT.

Last night I wrote a java program to solve a math puzzle in Professor Layton and Pandora's Box on the DS. I fucking love being a geek :D

I've decided to stick up a list of the books I've read since the last time I update my 50 Book Challenge, many moons ago. I may well have missed a few, I've been terrible at keeping track. In fact, holy crap. I just checked and it was early July when I last posted some reviews and I've only read six and a half books in the interim. I'm so not going to make it to 50 this year :S

26) Small Favor by Jim Butcher
Dresden and Michael versus the Denarians. Awesome ensues. Good read.

27) Turn Coat by Jim Butcher
Dresden and Morgan versus evil wizards and a skinwalker. Serious awesome ensues. Also, it turns out that Wizard HQ is in Edinburgh! I love it.

28) Pandaemonium by Christopher Brookmyre
The plot of Doom is transposed to the Scottish highlands, with the addition of a bunch of teenagers. A coming of age story with demons and pulse rifles, this was one of Brookmyre's best.

29) Someone Comes To Town, Someone Leaves Town by Cory Doctorow
Alan is the son of a mountain and a washing machine, and falls in love with the girl next door, who has wings. He sets out to blanket Toronto with free wireless internet. This was a deeply strange book, but it was also very funny and oddly touching.

30) Death Of A Ladies' Man by Alan Bissett
Charlie is an English teacher at a high school in Glasgow by day. By night, he is a womanizer and a douchebag. An intense portrait of a man's excesses and journey towards a self destruction he never sees coming. Not my usual kind of book, but very good nonetheless.

31) Mona Lisa Overdrive by William Gibson
The final book in the Sprawl trilogy, which began with Neuromancer and basically created the cyberpunk genre and the concept of cyberspace. This entry isn't quite so awesome, but it's a decent enough story. The blurb promised more than the book actually delivered, which was disappointing.

I'm currently reading the new Pratchett novel, but yeah. 50 is probably out of reach now unless I just spam read graphic novels.

Man, I fail at updating lately. It's been nearly a month since my last :S Since then, things have been mostly good. A quick run down of what's been happening:

- Started my masters at uni. I'm three weeks in now, and so far I've really been enjoying it. I was so used to sitting through maths lectures and being bored, it's a welcome to change to sit down and actually enjoy learning about a subject. The programming in particular is great fun. If you have a freakishly good memory, you might recall I said SAAS were paying all but £500 of my fees when I went to register. As it turned out, the department waived the remainder, which was a nice surprise.

- I passed my driving test! First time, with two minors, so I was pretty pleased with that. I'm insured on the parents' car, and the freedom to drive around is great. Still need to take the bus to uni though, mum needs the car for work in the mornings. I have free run of it in the evening though. That'll do donkey, that'll do.

- TV season: my favourite time of year :) New Dexter, Californicationm Big Bang Theory and Dollhouse are fantastic, and on the new show front I'm watching Flashforward and Stargate Universe. The former has good ideas but is a little on the heavy handed side, plus it features Sonya Walger with possibly the worst American accent ever on TV. SGU has obviously been cribbing furiously from BSG, but it's still a good show. Robert Carlyle is a large part of that, he's just endlessly watchable.

- On a related note, it's not current TV but I've started watching the first season of Supernatural. A whole bunch of people I know have been watching and enjoying it, and then I saw it for £9 on amazon... What can I say, I'm weak. I've actually been pleasantly surprised by the show, it's not as dumb as I thought it would be at all. Plus, that is a sweet car.

- Finally, to explain the mostly in my mostly good statement at the top of the entry: my 360 red ringed last night. Calamity and woe. I totally thought it was out of warranty, but thankfully I was wrong so that's something I guess. Quoted turn around time on repairs is two to three weeks though, so I'm without a way to stream stuff to my tv for an annoyingly long time.

(Oh yeah- it's been a seriously long time since I posted a book review. I have actually been reading in the interim, but too lazy to write the reviews. It's getting to the point where I'm starting to forget everything I've read, so I need to either write some reviews or just declare critical bankruptcy and post a list. I'll decide which later.)

I'm sitting out at the south flagpole behind the university, burning the half hour before I need to register and pay my tuition for the year. The sun's out, and even though the first leaves have fallen, I'm still going to call this the vestigial remains of a summer that never properly arrived. Kelvingrove Park is stretched out in front of me, the main building is doing its Hogwarts thing behind me, and the temperature is flirting with 20 degrees. Moments like this really make me love Glasgow.

Stolen from anton_p_nym- BrainHex, a cool personality test tailored to gamers.

I ranked as a Socialiser/Conqueror.

You like hanging around with people you trust, and helping people.

Your behaviour tends to be trusting, and you get angry at those who abuse your trust.

Your major brain region is the hypothalamus, which controls and influences trust and anger.

Your chemical messenger is oxytocin, which is associated with trust and enhances the effects of the reward chemical dopamine.

If you were an animal, it would be a dolphin.

The favourite games listed for those two classes are Final Fantasy, Left 4 Dead, Pokémon, Team Fortress 2, World of Warcraft, Call of Duty, Halo, Metal Gear Solid, Metroid, StarCraft, and Super Smash Bros. Which is really pretty accurate- I've played and enjoyed at least one entry in all of those series.

Apparently my least suited classes are Survivor and Daredevil. I'd agree with the former- Dead Space still scares the crap out of me- but I was surprised where it ranked me on the latter. I love the whole Prince of Persia running jumping climbing trees thing.

I passed my driving theory test today, yay! Well, it's not a huge achievement given that I already had to do one to get my bike license years ago, but still. I'm happy. Once I get paid next week, I'll hopefully book my practical test for around the end of September.

In other good news, I finally heard back from SAAS about my funding for the MSc. They're paying all but £500 of the fees, which is a huge relief, and they've given me a decent grant too. Not enough that I can quit my job just yet, but it'll help :) My dad is already trying to convince me to use the money to buy a car. I am now definitely going back to uni, my worrying can stop.

I ended up at a house party on Saturday night, for the first time in quite a while. My social skills are just as anaemic as ever, I can safely report. In my defense, no one there was much better. It was a barbeque in honour of a friend from uni moving down to London for a job, and while the cooking was going on everyone was hanging out and mingling a little. After an hour and a half or so the rain came on and forced us inside, and then the night became much more clique-y. Brian, Mark, me and the other Park Mains turn outs banded together and occupied the living room. Bobby's high school friends took over the dining room, and the remainder of his friends from uni piled into the kitchen/extension. Despite that, I had a good time and it was nice to see a few faces from uni for what may well be the last time.

A lot of stuff happened at Gamescom and Blizzcon last week, some of it even exciting. The news of a new WoW expansion left me feeling slightly underwhelmed, much like the latest patch did. It very much feels like the game is coming to the end of its lifetime for a lot of players. I'm sure the hardcore faithful would disagree with me, but as someone who falls squarely in the middle of the spectrum of MMO players- not too casual, but not too mental- World of Warcraft has lost its shine. I've cancelled my account again, and none of the newly announced content makes me want to change my mind.

Blizzcon was not a total letdown, of course. Diablo III continues to look phenomenal, and I'm very much looking forward to rolling a Barbarian and diving in when the game is released. However, the real surprise from the weekend came when they announced that Tricia Helfer is the new voice of Sarah Kerrigan. I guess I'll miss Glynnis Campbell, whose voice has become something of a staple in Blizzard's games, but seriously people- NUMBER SIX IS THE QUEEN OF BLADES! One of the most badass female video game characters ever. HELL TO THE YES. If you haven't played Starcraft, quite possibly the greatest strategy game of all time, then, well, shame on you :P

Gamescom had nothing which quite rivalled the awesomeness of the Tricia Helfer announcement, but even still they showed promising footage for a few games I'm looking forward to with growing glee- namely Mass Effect 2, Assassin's Creed 2 and the new Castlevania. There was also a trailer for Guild Wars 2, which had me excited on general principle but showed very little of the game proper, so I can't say for sure if it's looking good or not.

Reviews are starting to be published for Batman: Arkham Asylum, which is out on Friday over here, and they're overwhelmingly positive. Like, over 90% positive. This is truly delightful news. There hasn't really been a great comic book game before now, and definitely not a DC one, so that a Batman game from a practically unheard of developer is gathering such acclaim is both unusual and deeply satisfying. The demo really had my hopes up, and I'm so glad the reviews are supporting those hopes. I'll be buying it. Just as soon as I get paid...

I haven't been on LJ much at all in the past week- my excuse is that last Wednesday I finally managed to get hold of a copy of Tales of Vesperia for the 360. This game, the latest entry in the ongoing and extremely awesome Tales series, has been out in the US since last August, but only got a UK release in June of this year. Ever since then it's been out of stock on the sites I shop at, so I was surprised but pleased to see a copy sitting on the shelf in the Braehead HMV store. I've been playing it a lot since then- between that and watching tv, I've hardly been on my computer at all, hence my lack of updating and (I will shamefully concede) lack of participation at whedonland. Tales is a fantastic game so far, with an excellent combat system and an engaging story. It falls foul of it's fair share of JRPG tropes- an irritating J-pop theme song; a main character who, from the box art, I was convinced was female; a naive princess finding her way in the world; hilariously camp villains; a mysterious figure with a powerful sword who helps the party on occasion; and plenty more besides. For all that, it's well written and the voice actors are largely inoffensive. In fact, many of them are actually pretty good. Yuri (once you realise he's a guy) is a much more compelling protagonist than Lloyd from Tales of Symphonia (the last Tales game released in Europe... *grumble*) ever was. My progress in the game has slowed over the past couple of days, since my mum's been hogging the tv when she gets in from work in the early afternoon, so I'm limited to playing in the morning and after she goes to bed. I'm beginning to think I'd be better off putting the xbox in my room, but I've painted myself into a corner there- the console is now the default family DVD player and sees a lot of use as a media center extender, so there would be a lot of complaining if I removed it.

Aside from playing Tales, the other highlight of my week was the launch of the new Christopher Brookmyre novel last Friday. He gave a talk for an hour, followed by a signing afterwards. Mark and I went along, though we ended up missing the first 10 or 15 minutes thanks to insane traffic on the M8- it took us an hour to cover 12 miles. We were able to sneak in at the back without too much fuss, and what we saw of his talk was hilarious. Afterwards I bought a copy of the novel, Pandaemonium, and got it signed. I managed to have a brief conversation with the author on the finer points of Doom, Half Life and Old Man Murray (the book is awash with gaming references, this conversation wasn't apropos of nothing.) I've read the book now, and it's great. A review will follow when I can be bothered.

I can't finish without mentioning "(Do You Wanna Date) My Avatar", the new music video from The Guild. It was first shown at Comic Con, but it only appeared online in not-shot-on-a-phone form on Monday. I've watched quite a few times since then, it's safe to say. I swear, my geek crush on Felicia Day grows every day. It started back during Buffy season 7, when I shipped Willow and Vi like a crazy person- never took to Kennedy at all. It's only grown stronger since then, through The Guild and Dr Horrible and most recently in Epitaph One, by far the best Dollhouse episode of the season. This video does nothing but strengthen my adoration. (Plus, spot Maurissa Tancharoen as a dancer with Tinkerballa, as a Bladezz groupie, and on backing vocals. Awesome.)