It's been three weeks since I last played Nightingale. Back then, I was still enjoying the ambience and there were things left I could have done but it was all starting to get a bit what's the point?"  I'd reached the end of the narrative, seen all the main biomes as well as most of their variations, and while there were still plenty of upgrades I could have made to all my gear, the stuff I had was already more than equal to anything I was likely to ask of it. Everything left to do seemed like it would become incrementally less engaging the longer I carried on with it, so I stopped. This ..read more

Chris Neal at MassivelyOP raised an interesting question ths weekend, when he asked whatever happened to Atlas, the piratical MMO that went into Early Access all the way back in 2018 and never came out the other side. I bought it shortly after it became available and posted some extensive First Impressions (1, 2, 3, and 4.) based on the week I spent there, after which I pretty much never set foot in the game again. In fact, according to Steam, my total playtime in Atlas comes to less than seven hours. I currently don't even have it installed. I suppose I should probably be annoyed I ever boug ..read more

It's been a whole month since the last What I've Been Listening To Lately. That's why I have nearly a hundred tracks bookmarked. I really need to make this a weekly feature. Or once a fortnight. Oh, hey! Now there's a honking great 1970s-style AM pop radio DJ link if ever there was one. All I need to do is talk over the intro and we're set! Fortnight - Taylor Swift I guess there's no escaping it. As Stereogum put it, this is the track from the new album that she's personally selected to debut at #1 next week and who are we to argue with Taylor Swift? Luckily, I like it and I have plenty to ..read more

Did you know yesterday was Superman Day? I didn't and Bree at MassivelyOP didn't remember the date either. It turns out there's a good reason why we might have been confused. There's more than one Superman Day. Bree was reporting on what she'd read in a press release from Daybreak Games' subdivision Dimensional Ink, which confidently begins "April 18th marks the official celebration of Superman Day across the web, the world, and the DC Universe." And that's the truth. Or one of them. The DC establishment backs April 18. James Gunn is Mr. DC for the moment and he certainly thinks April 18 is Su ..read more

New World has always looked gorgeous, even at lower fidelity, but with the much more powerful video card I bought last summer now able to run it at the higher settings, it's more stunning than ever. That was readily apparent the moment I logged in after a 13GB patch today to take a look at the Springtime Bloom event that just began. The game generally does holidays well, with events that are accessible, entertaining and visually spectacular, although if there's a "but..." it's that they do tend to stick to a formula. I missed the first Springtime Bloom last year but the current one still felt ..read more

Exactly a month ago I said I wasn't going to be "dabbling with audio and video" any more," unless and until there are some very major advances. Why? Because "It takes ages and I get nothing interesting out of it."  That remains true for AI-generated video, which still seems a long way from becoming a consumer product. I keep a weather eye on it in case anything worth mentioning develops but so far it's mostly more of the same five second pans and uncanny-valley animation, with tiny, incremental adjustments only the initiated will notice. AI audio - specifically music - is another matte ..read more

After I hit Publish on last month's post about not being able to watch the third and fourth seasons of Roswell New Mexico, I did what I said I might do and re-upped to my VPN of choice, which happens to be Mullvad. It's very cheap, has no registration process to speak of and happily supports ad hoc comings and goings with no need for any kind of subscription.  Also, it has a cute logo of a mole wearing a hard hat. Not that I'm saying that influenced me in any way. The only drawback is that Mullvad doesn't support Windows operating systems older than Win10, as I found out when I went to ..read more

I was a little startled to see this news report from MassivelyOP, when it popped up in my feed this evening. It's all about "a selection of officially licensed GW2 flower seeds based on some of the plants found within Tyria". The MOP piece doesn't specifically say they're for sale but that's the impression I got and it made me think. I have a garden. I don't like gardening but I have one anyway. It came with the house. It's not small, either.  When we first moved in, thirty years ago, we used it a lot. Then the kids left home and we mostly forgot about it for a while. When we remembered ..read more

No plan survives contact with the livestream, as the saying goes. I sat down at my PC this morning with all kinds of good intentions. Then I clicked a link to what I thought was a clip from Lana del Rey's headlining set at Coachella last night and it turned out to be the livestream of her on stage right now. So that was my morning gone. Well, an hour of it. Lana was midway through her set when I arrived, or thereabouts. I knew it was being livestreamed but by my calculations yesterday she was due on around four in the morning my time and since I'm not (Faron) young enough for wolf hours any ..read more

The plan for today was a music post but they take a while and the weather's turned warm and fine so that's not happening. The garden won't tidy itself, more's the pity. Instead, how about another Friday grab-bag? I think I have enough bookmarks for one of those... Is it, Though? The headline on the news report at MMOBomb trumpets "The World Of Pantheon: Rise Of The Fallen Is Looking Much Better With The New Lighting Update". News Editor Troy Blackburn seems really impressed:  "...the most impressive thing they have implemented into Pantheon: Rise of the Fallen is the improved lighting ..read more