Monday Media #1 - A Cacophony of Sights and Sounds

What I have been playing.

- The Witcher 3

Ah The Witcher 3. I played through this game last year without any of the DLC. It took be about 50 hours to complete when focusing on the main story line and a bit surrounding it. I thoroughly enjoyed large amounts of the game. During the Christmas Sale on Steam I grabbed the DLC, Hearts of Stone and Blood and Wine. So now I am currently playing through it again. This time I am not going to focus on just the main story. I am going to try to do everything. Every quest completed. Every explorable area will be traversed. Currently I am about 5.5 hours in and am still in White Orchard. This game is so fun to just wander around and see what there is.

- Call of Duty 4

I have owned Call of Duty 4 on the PC for many years now. I have always enjoyed it but sadly I had to put it away as new games had to be played. So about a week ago I reinstalled it, updated to the newest version, and installed cod4x, an update mod. It is as fun as I remember. Great level design. Fun, fast game play. And wonderful community servers. I have found a server that runs a modded version of the game. This server contains almost all of the maps from all other call of duty games. It is a blast to play through and enjoy all of these maps in one game. I will probably continue to play this for a few more days. It is just a blast from that past that gives me a little blast of nostalgia and enjoyment over the week.

- WW2 Online: Battlefront Europe

This is one that I have some experience with. WW2 Online: Battlefront Europe, WW2 Online for short, is a MMO scale WW2 simulation game. The reason I say simulation game is that it not only covers infantry combat but also, armor, artillery, air, and sea, Each one is covered in a good amount of depth. To even add to the scale of it they entire game is played over a half scale version of Western Europe from Eastern France/Southern England to Western Germany. The reason I decided to pick WW2 Online up again was due to the fact that they were discounting subscriptions slightly for the Holiday season. So I though why not and I grabbed it for a month. The past few days were made of large scale infantry pushes, armored support operations, and air to air combat. When I say large scale infantry pushes I mean large amounts of me moving up with a large force and getting shot. When I say armored support operations I gave a group of paratroopers a lift on my Panzer 38 to a forested FOB, Forward Operating Base, and was subsequently destroyed while supporting those troops to take the FOB. I hope they were able to take it. And when I say air to air combat it means that I flew a BF-109F-1 in several bomber support missions to be subsequently be shot out of the sky. While the outcome of these situations all ended up in my death I enjoyed ever second of it. I met some interesting people. Shot some interesting people. And died to people I never knew. It was glorious.

What I have been reading.

- Star Wars: Heir to the Jedi

Currently I have been keeping up with Jesse Cox's Star Wars New Canon Podcast. Every month they send you off with a few to read assignments based around the new canon after Disney wiped out all of the old. This months were Heir to the Jedi and The Clone Wars Season 4. So since this is the reading section I will talk about Heir to the Jedi. I have heard mixed things about it but do not know much about it so we shall see as the weeks go on. Currently I am two chapters in and am quite enjoying it. Luke Skywalker was sent to Rodia to facilitate an arms deal between the Rebellion and a local Rodian clan. During the start of his journey he starts to make some new acquaintances and learns more about the Jedi than he knew before.

- 2600: The Hacker Quarterly Winter 2016-2017

I was at Barnes and Noble picking up the previous book when I thought I would look at the magazines. A brownish book about 3/4 this size of a regular magazine caught my eye in the tech section. Printed upon the cover was a picture of an Atari console with a collage of people behind it. Above it were the words 2600 The Hacker Quarterly. This magazine looked odd so I opened it up to one of the articles that appealed to me. It was talking about how they were able to repair and rescue fake memory cards. It was quite interesting. So I grabbed it up. It covers just a wide variety of community written hacking and tech culture articles. I would recommend it if you are interested in either of these things.

What I have been watching.

- Star Wars: The Clone Wars Season 4

I have to say I was never a big fan of The Clone Wars. I have currently watched Seasons 1-4. 1-3 are sort of a slog. It has about a 20/80 split on what I would consider good and what I would consider bad. 20% of it is worth the watch and the rest can be painful to sit through. The characters can be boring, childish, and/or just plain annoying. One thing I cannot fault it with is being ugly. The environment designs and characters are well made. Everything feels that it fits well together. The action and scene are beautiful to watch. What I would consider bad is some of the story telling and character portrayals. The characters have a large amount of depth but sadly they can be poorly told. About 3/4 of the way through Season 3 they got their act together. The action was fast. The stories were well paced and told. And the graphics on screen where beautiful. Season 4 took that layout and ran with it. It was almost all great. Heck I would say I enjoyed all of it. It felt Star Wars. There were interesting characters. Interesting Worlds. Large amounts of action, combat, and a healthy dose of space magic, also known as the Force. And great stories within the world of Star Wars. I would recommend starting here if you don't care to know the characters backstories. It is really where they have shown their talent when it comes to making The Clone Wars. I'd give it a good 8/10.

- Passengers

Passengers is a sci-fi movie based around the transit of a colonization project onto another world. There are about 5,000 passengers, if I remember right, being transported to this other planet. It is a 120+ year journey so in order for the colonists to survive they are put in suspended animation.  Along the way an accident occurs and a hibernation pod malfunctions. This pod contains an engineer. Who  sadly wakes up 99 years too early. He ends up getting himself into even more trouble when he cannot handle the isolation and in desperation wakes up another passenger. This movie covers their interactions and many events that follow. Overall the concept is really good. The execution can leave a little to be desired. I enjoyed it for what it was trying to do but felt it could have done it better. 6/10

See ya Wednesday!

- Bly