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Five Things Make a Post
Aug. 28th, 2014 10:58 pm1. Spring is here, spring is here. The days are long enough again that I'm waking up in time to get ready for work without rushing and sunglasses are useful walking home, and in between it's too warm to keep wearing a jacket (which annoyingly leaves me short of several useful pockets).
2. At the beginning of September, my Liaden Universe re-read will hit Agent of Change, the novel which began it all. (Yes, slightly over a year in. There have been a lot of prequels since then.) I feel I should mention that it's a convenient jumping-on point, being by necessity written for an audience unfamiliar with the universe and the characters, and the e-book edition is part of the Baen Free Library. The man who was not Terrence O'Grady had come quietly...
3. Speaking of e-book editions of books I would be pressing on all my friends if I were the kind of person who did that, there's an introductory price offer going on the first two volumes of Rosemary Kirstein's Steerswoman series. (The link goes to Amazon, but they're also available in the other places e-books are usually found.) Not being, as I mentioned, constitutionally inclined to explaining to people how much I loved books, I'm going to let Jo Walton and James Nicoll do it for me. (James's post goes into more detail than Jo's, but is less safe for the spoilerphobe, and this is one series where finding out too much in advance can squash the fun of discovering it for yourself.)
4. It's a sign of how much side- and bonus content is packed into Lego Marvel Super Heroes that when I finished the main storyline a month ago, the counter showing how much of the game I'd played stood at a bit less than 25%. It's now up around 75%; I've finished the bonus episodes and most of the random bystander sidequests, and been through the storyline again in Free Play mode to try and pick up the bonus points that aren't accessible in Story Mode. (Free Play lets you choose which character you play as, and change your mind whenever you like, instead of being stuck with the characters the story gives you, and thereby reach places and solve puzzles the story characters can't. When I'm not facing a puzzle that requires a particular character's special abilities, my two default characters in Free Play are Iron Man, for efficient property damage, and Squirrel Girl, for her special way of dealing with hordes of attacking mooks.)
The remaining content is mostly in two areas that don't particularly appeal to me. The first is there are still bonus points eluding me in some of the story episodes, and I don't feel like playing through again to get them, at least not yet. (Finishing the bonus episodes was supposed to unlock a set of abilities that would make finding the bonus points easier, but I have to say that I haven't noticed them make any difference whatever.) The second thing is that I haven't done most of the aerial races/obstacle courses, and don't intend to. (I didn't intend to do many of the road races either, but once I'd got the hang of the controls it turned out to be a lot of fun zooming through the city and ploughing through innocent scenery at high speed; however, there's no scenery in the sky and the flight controls are even more annoying than the driving controls.)
5. There were things I liked and things I didn't like about "Deep Breath", the first episode of the new season of Doctor Who. The new Doctor, as played by Peter Capaldi, was definitely one of the things I liked. I was less keen on Clara's arc, which struck me as a case of Steven Moffat coming up with an interesting story about a companion reacting to the Doctor's regeneration (okay so far) and deciding to use it regardless of whether it actually fit the current companion (I'm having trouble thinking of any companion less likely than Clara to react that way, and it doesn't help that the same episode contains several reminders of why). The blatant Here Be This Season's Mystery bit at the end of the episode completely failed to engage my interest, but I guess I'll put up with it for more Capaldi.
2. At the beginning of September, my Liaden Universe re-read will hit Agent of Change, the novel which began it all. (Yes, slightly over a year in. There have been a lot of prequels since then.) I feel I should mention that it's a convenient jumping-on point, being by necessity written for an audience unfamiliar with the universe and the characters, and the e-book edition is part of the Baen Free Library. The man who was not Terrence O'Grady had come quietly...
3. Speaking of e-book editions of books I would be pressing on all my friends if I were the kind of person who did that, there's an introductory price offer going on the first two volumes of Rosemary Kirstein's Steerswoman series. (The link goes to Amazon, but they're also available in the other places e-books are usually found.) Not being, as I mentioned, constitutionally inclined to explaining to people how much I loved books, I'm going to let Jo Walton and James Nicoll do it for me. (James's post goes into more detail than Jo's, but is less safe for the spoilerphobe, and this is one series where finding out too much in advance can squash the fun of discovering it for yourself.)
4. It's a sign of how much side- and bonus content is packed into Lego Marvel Super Heroes that when I finished the main storyline a month ago, the counter showing how much of the game I'd played stood at a bit less than 25%. It's now up around 75%; I've finished the bonus episodes and most of the random bystander sidequests, and been through the storyline again in Free Play mode to try and pick up the bonus points that aren't accessible in Story Mode. (Free Play lets you choose which character you play as, and change your mind whenever you like, instead of being stuck with the characters the story gives you, and thereby reach places and solve puzzles the story characters can't. When I'm not facing a puzzle that requires a particular character's special abilities, my two default characters in Free Play are Iron Man, for efficient property damage, and Squirrel Girl, for her special way of dealing with hordes of attacking mooks.)
The remaining content is mostly in two areas that don't particularly appeal to me. The first is there are still bonus points eluding me in some of the story episodes, and I don't feel like playing through again to get them, at least not yet. (Finishing the bonus episodes was supposed to unlock a set of abilities that would make finding the bonus points easier, but I have to say that I haven't noticed them make any difference whatever.) The second thing is that I haven't done most of the aerial races/obstacle courses, and don't intend to. (I didn't intend to do many of the road races either, but once I'd got the hang of the controls it turned out to be a lot of fun zooming through the city and ploughing through innocent scenery at high speed; however, there's no scenery in the sky and the flight controls are even more annoying than the driving controls.)
5. There were things I liked and things I didn't like about "Deep Breath", the first episode of the new season of Doctor Who. The new Doctor, as played by Peter Capaldi, was definitely one of the things I liked. I was less keen on Clara's arc, which struck me as a case of Steven Moffat coming up with an interesting story about a companion reacting to the Doctor's regeneration (okay so far) and deciding to use it regardless of whether it actually fit the current companion (I'm having trouble thinking of any companion less likely than Clara to react that way, and it doesn't help that the same episode contains several reminders of why). The blatant Here Be This Season's Mystery bit at the end of the episode completely failed to engage my interest, but I guess I'll put up with it for more Capaldi.
