Far Cry 4 is busy. “You know those moments of silence between things going haywire,” the designers apparently thought. “People hate those.” You are fighting in some sort of red team-blue team dethrone-the-fake-king situation in “Kyratt.” It is open-world-with-campaign. There is shooting. There is hunting. There is ... no rest. You may decide to creep up on a base to take it. While you are gathering intel, animals will probably attack you, random events will overtake you, your hired merc keeps shouting while you’re trying to stay in cover, eagles claw at your face, the fearsome honey badger wants your liver on a plate. It’s a bit too much. Not exaggerating here, start event A, it will be interrupted by events B, C, and D. It’s an odd decision. You can’t ratchet the frequency down, setting it to “easy” doesn’t seem to have an effect. You start to learn how to avoid events both “in-game” ‒ standing out in the open for awhile gets you an eagle attack, so you hang out in cars or next to buildings/trees ‒ and “out-of-game.” If you take a base, there are (a) small after-victory attempts by the enemy to re-take the base, and when you leave the base on foot/in a car, there is a major attempt. This is ridiculous because you’re usually leaving to go do some other thing, and you keep getting interrupted, over and over and over so that you’re in three+ deep. I reflexively now fast travel away from the base after grabbing one.

The random events are a mixed bag. There’s always some villagers being gnawed on by a bear or clawed at by an eagle. These aren’t even “random events,” it’s just ... what happens, almost all the time within earshot/just out of eyeshot. Rest assured, you’ll be just far enough away that when you arrive on the scene everyone is dead, or you’ve got a half-second to take a potshot at aggro eagle #827. There’s a bunch of shooting just over there, it sounds like a war, and you arrive it’s two of your comrades against one enemy. You potshot him, and think “ah, peace has restored to the kingdom. Now it will be quiet for at least a minute” and immediately your buddies start madly shooting into the air to celebrate ... your “victory.” “Did someone say ‘fast travel’ again?”

The map marks everything, but finding the main campaign or specific events/etc is sometimes difficult. “Can I not find the main campaign because I haven’t advanced yet in the open world enough to trigger the next waypoint, or can I not find the main campaign because it’s a small icon on a huge map that is sometimes 90% buried beneath other icons.”

Hunting is a total drag and part of the core game, you can’t skip it. It’s all the time. You can turn off all the “collecting” animations which includes skinning. This has the added bonus of reducing your time stuck in animations while a honey badger chews on your leg. Honey badger doesn’t wait for no one.

Weapon loadout is limited and annoying. (A) you are going to do a hunting event to get a bigger bag for your loot. You set up your loadout at base camp: your best weapons. You arrive at the starting point. “Grab this bow, because it only counts if you shoot the animal with a bow, because of course.” But I ... have a bow. You couldn’t tell me when we started? You can grab the bow, but your bow is better. So you start to back out. “Oh, you want to quit the mission entirely?” [FX: eye roll] (B) The UI for the loadout is ... incredibly poor. I don’t know who needs to hear this, but if I am equipping multiple weapons on my person, there should be one page where all of that is selectable/clickable/whateverable. “If you want to modify your large weapon, you can find it in the list of weapons in the “specialized” category, and your regular gun is in the “weapon” sub-page, and your sidearm is somewhere in the “sidearm” page. Then if you want to change any of these, you can click on the “holster” selection on these sub-pages to ... ugh. One page, no scroll bars, no sub-pages.

The collectibles range from a quick roadside pullover to spending 15 minutes of anguish trying to work your way over a mountain face. Roping is a tad more advanced than Uncharted and Tomb Raider: The Tomb Raidering. If you die, you warp back to base (for the most part), so you can do it all again. I passed on these opportunities when offered.

The skirmishes/campaign battles worked for me after I ratcheted down to “easy.” Challenging, not ridiculous. My reflexes are poor and the fog of war continues to vex. I spend about 20% of my time running around yelling “who the dang is shooting me?” There’s a little lopsidedness in that the enemy can see you with pixel perfect aim, and you’re looking at ... some bushes. It feels like a touch of the “in cover, getting shot” problem with Uncharted 4 when you’re inside a hut and they’re getting a ridiculous angle on you through the window. Some of the advanced combat moves I can “earn” I anticipate never using so I’m not bothering to “earn” them. “To attack two guys in cover when one has a flamethrower and the other is reading comics, use the Hyped-Up Crazypants syringe to gain a 27.3% increase in head-bonking-coconutability by pressing W-H-U-T then move the mouse into the seven o’clock position.” Again, I play the long game with snipers and throwables; they are good about sniffing you out, firing mortars/charging to make you work for it. With this game I’ve also taken a shine to running full-bore into central HQ and holing up in a corner. Sometimes it works. The merc is useless. You can spend good money for a merc upgrade. You send out a merc, he’s all whoop whoop shouting, sometimes driving straight into camp. Seconds later, a pop-up: “The mercenary is dead.” Yeah, yeah. The computer fought itself and won, and lost.

It is important to note that this is a proper “open world” game, not like Uncharted 4 rail world. Go do what you want to do, leave the main campaign hanging for awhile or plow straight through it. Some events/items are time-dribbled, including a large portion of the map. Some performative bonuses are tied to optional events I will be skipping, like arena combat. Some things become unbalanced depending on your style of play. I have been accruing skill points for awhile but have nothing to spend them on, even though there’s still ~14 skill upgrades available. They’re all either “do this main campaign mission [which is 1X missions away]” or “do two of these side missions [that you are not going to do]” or “take over two bases without anyone noticing” which given how quick the enemy spots you sneaking about ... that’s too tedious.

There are occasional guffaws. Enemies yelling at you that they’re going to relish the opportunity of killing you suddenly being mauled by an errant bear, say. Or being rhino-shoved. I found my favorite vehicle in the game, a Tuk-tuk (you cannot own/spawn vehicles; yes of course they occasionally despawn when you’re in the middle of nowhere), and was putting along a mountain path when I passed a rhino that was charging another occupied car. “Well, it will be busy with that, I’m safe in my little tin can.” Then the rhino got bored with its toy and charged me. Turns out: Tuk-tuk is slower than rhino. The rhino bashed the hell out of the Tuk-tuk and I went rolling/flying half-off the cliff. It was like the ending of (spoiler inside spoiler) The Italian Job except with a car smaller than the film’s iconic Minis. I waited around for the deathblow, but the rhino trundled off to despawn somewhere.

Far Cry 4 is currently on sale.

Horne Section Podcast: Wind the Bobbin Up (Greg Davies; Alex Horne; 34sec).

What A Combo (Fern Brady) “Fusion Food Is Bollocks” / Chef Big Has (34min)

Finished Uncharted 4 which is on sale at the moment. Haven’t touched earlier versions, I don’t think they’re available for the pc. This one was pc-ported in late 2022. Early in the game, you’re tasked with playing a popular old-tyme videogame device named Crash Bandicoot during a “home” scene. I never played Crash Bandicoot, you run toward the screen so you can’t see where you’re going. My thought while playing: “Well, this is just bugnuts awful. I’m so glad this is a one-off and no one ever did this ever again.” [SFX: haunting foreshadowing wind whistles through empty cavern]

The gameplay is basically identical to the Tomb Raider series (I don’t which is copying from which or if they’re both copying from an earlier source, or etc), down to the annoying pitons (just ... the whole piton experience was a net negative one with the timing and whatnot). I felt better about roping in Uncharted (the protagonist’s hands get all grabby when he’s in reach of a reach, so you’re not just hoping for the best and launching to doom) than Tomb Raider, and there is no weapon/etc upgrade skill tree, for better or for worse.

I spent quality time wondering if I should go with gun X from a fallen enemy that I murdered or stick with gun Y, the gun that I killed him with. Since there’s no gun guide on the Unchartered fandom wiki and I’m too lazy to go hunting, I snapped to a “gun with most bullets equals most fun” rubric. You were allowed one handgun and one ... bigger gun. You couldn’t grab two AKs, or two RPGs, or even two handguns. Between major sections you would lose your chosen gun, I can’t remember if it was every time, but it happened enough that it probably was a thing. Sometimes I’d try switching between two guns and the old gun would disappear on the ground. “Huh. Choice is easy now.”

Shooting felt a little glorky, if you know what I mean. I felt like ~17.2% of the shots I fired should have hit when they didn’t, though the stats said I was hitting 35% which is in line w/my usual situation. But cover was annoying. Pull up behind a solid pillar, and shots that are clearly whizzing by you also cause damage. On top of this, your NPC pals occasionally would hole up behind cover exactly where you wanted to be. So you could either hold a non-"locked” position behind them, or find another less-good angle. They would also sometimes try to shoot enemies through walls, or continually miss after firing at one person for a long time while I just sat around waiting for a safer clip-pick-up time. We have an early entry in the worst sentence of 2024 contest, everyone [FX: party favors party favoring]. (New year’s resolution: do less with less)

Normally I wouldn’t have even mentioned the death scenes. I die a lot. But thanks to Tomb Raider, I have a low bar. Here’s a surprise: less gruesome deaths than Tomb Raider! Seriously, guys, get some help. Some health plans in the USA will actually pay for “non-continual” psychological counselling. You can have a problem, but it better not be a lifelong problem, that’s not covered. Adventure awaits: level up on phone trees!

The plot was serviceable, points off for [FX: spoilers inbound] chief antagonist actually saying protagonist-will-not-shoot-us after you’ve shot up 100+ of his underlings. Serious weird surreal points off for the whole “we’re chasing this treasure because this psycho guy helped my brother break out of jail” and you actually do that, you’re the brother for awhile and you break out of jail with the psycho guy and he’s all “I want that treasure or I will kill you lol rofl” and it is revealed that the brother was actually lying and the psycho guy died months before. So that whole jail break sequence you played out was a fictional story told w/in the “real world” of the plot. But I was there, man.

Triple-A Game: Okay you’re in prison and there’s a prison break, right? And you’re in a group of escapees. And the other escapees, they’re yelling at you because you’re just ... slowly walking. Not even a regular-paced walk. “Hurry up! Come on!” Over and over. It’s very dramatic, the way you saunter through the halls with this weird posture like you’re amped on looking for change on the floor extremely methodically while everyone else is shooting up the place way ahead of you.
Key bindings: “Run"? What’s that?
[ten minutes later]
Triple-A Game: Okay, you’re in a different prison and there’s a -second- prison break, right? And you’re in a group of ... just use the roll. It’s faster.
Me: Combat roll, got it.
Key bindings: It’s just “roll.” You can use it any time.
Me: Any time I want to look like a total dickhead constantly rolling through the prison like a fuckin’ boozed-up stunt clown during a shoot-out, yeah? Running was too “high tech” back in 2016?
Triple-A Game / Key bindings: [FX: staring]

Struggling to lift a gate or move a shelving unit by continually/quickly hitting “E” got old, really fast. It was not a challenge that added anything to immersion or gameplay enjoyment. If I stopped, then we all sat around looking at the gate etc. Same mechanic for breaking an enemy’s hold etc. “Oh no, I am incapable of hitting ‘E’ quickly.”

Uncharted 4 for all the chatter about it being “almost open world” felt more like a rail than some of Tomb Raider. The latter even had a lick of trading/money management thrown in to at least one of the titles. With Uncharted you come across a large abandoned town/settlement/whatever and immediately you will be shown/told that your destination is whatever-the-farthest-thing-away-from-you-is-which-is-also-the-tallest-and-or-biggest.

The entire treasure/pirate story was entertaining, all done up with real pirates that really existed. Though ... liberties were taken wrt their capabilities and amount of plunder plundered (game: “vast, just crazy-go-nuts”). Fun game fact: pirates had proximity mine technology in the 17th century. Interesting puzzles, litle too easy, little too much hand-holding (I played on the default “moderate” setting). Characters don’t repeat phrases over and over ... though, on the other hand, at one point someone said something clue-y during a bout of gunfire so it was lost to me. Compromise: make a “What?” command.

If something is chasing you, how do you convey that in a game? You could get the thing on screen with the protagonist, or you could show it in rear-view mirrors if the protagonist is in a car, or split-screen, or a picture-in-picture, or with sound, or with cuts, or with camera angles, or let the player move the camera around so they can see it, or you could fucking go Crash Bandicoot on everyone’s ass.

The thing with Crash Bandicoot is that you only participate in that one game mode, running toward your gaming IRL self. With Uncharted 4, when the switch to “running-toward” occurs, the control layout changes. Wait, does this mode have a name. [FX: looks at wiki] Why the hell is this thing a novel “The majority of the game takes place from a third-person perspective in which Crash moves into the screen.” They don’t have a name for this concept because it is ass. “... moves into the screen.” Ugh, phrasing. So. At one point in the game, you’re riding as a passenger on a motorcycle, and a truck is chasing you. You fire on the truck with your gun while moving into the screen. The truck eventually blows up. “Well, good thing that was brief.” Sections later, you’re on foot moving into the screen. There’s the same type of truck. Which way to go? Who knows, and who can remember how the controls are mapped. Seriously, I’m writing this now and I can’t remember if they flipped the controls when they switched to Bandicootview (there, I’ve christened the garbage) or if they kept it the same. Doesn’t matter, either way it takes time for your brain to work out the details, or maybe just my brain. Maybe my brain isn’t plastic enough. [FX: applies brain plasticity test, passes] Nope, that’s not it, turns out it’s just a stupid idea. The truck enthusiastically drives over you twenty+ times. The ragdoll death sequences are the most dynamic in the game. “Got some distance on that one.” “Oh here’s a side alley I could just --” Truck: “LOL NO” I don’t remember how I figured out what the program wanted me to do. Truck driving through me over and over and over again. Felt like a puppet, started disassociating, earth below me. “What is this?” At least GTA5 had a “skip bullshit mission” button, I mean, except for the torture scene (again, your USA health service provider may have co-payment severely-limited mental wellness shopportunities, check your five-inch thick contract volume II). Section going out with a least-enjoyable game portion award 2023.

If you’re in a convoy-type battle what happens if you’re taking too long to clear it? With Uncharted, they just re-loop the same sequence over and over. It’s a long bit, most people wouldn’t notice, but ... there was this bug. I jumped into an enemy car. Or that is, I almost jumped in. I froze right before I landed in the passenger seat. Couldn’t move/shoot/take damage, just look around with the mouse. And we kept rolling. So I let it go, out of curiosity. Looped for ten minutes. My enemy driver was courteous, but did not get me to my destination; five stars. Ran through it again, no problem.

That’s another thing. I’m never going to play this again. I replayed the three most recent Tomb Raiders once each. But this one, I tried re-visiting with some “bonus” hacks you can activate (infinite ammo, anti-gravity, etc) to go missed-treasure/journal-entry hunting (the protagonist keeps a journal w/pretty stylin’ drawings, does not take any photos except to drive the plot) but I just didn’t feel like doing the endless roping/pitoning/playing as child-you (that comes up twice) slog to get to the giant abandoned town, for example. Additionally, you cannot skip any cut scene at all. Maybe this was a transfer artifact, oops, it worked on the Playstation? Yeah, that’s it, he convincingly lied to himself because who doesn’t have a scene-skip in 2018). Maybe a “online video” person has recorded just the journal images (full online playthrough videos are ten hours, not going through that just to find 20ish journal images). The treasures (bottom-of-barrel collectible, does not affect metric/plot in any way other than “Treasures acquired”) were odd; a large majority of them were in a small rooms just off the main trail, and every one of them had an identical glint you could see from ... forever away. Didn’t really feel ... worth the bother.

PS: Don’t make the main antagonist look/sound like Rob Schneider.

PPS: There’s another campaign (Uncharted: The Lost Legacy) included w/the Steam PC version, two different main characters, set in India. Better main character, more interesting map (open-world, you pick where to go/what to tackle), more interesting puzzles/side quests. Two timed events with generous slop (so far) (I hate timed events, thank you no. “Do a thing, but faster” “or, shove your Taylorism up your ass”). Melee still a problem, but I’m uninterested in melee in general so maybe it’s superlative melee, doesn’t matter and I wouldn’t know, not enough experience with it. Still has that damn truck though. No Bandicootvision or whatever I called it as of yet. Occasional bouts of “you’re supposed to crash though this building run over here, the floor collapses while you’re being fired on” and I find some sort of refuge somewhere where I can’t get hit and the game continues with the dramatic soundtrack. I enjoy stuff like this too much, more than playing the game as intended. Main playing rubric these days: “How do I ... screw with this.” Especially when characters try to give me pointers. [FX: coming up on enemy camp] “We should sneak around/through/try not to disturb them ...” What? Did you say “shoot the sniper immediately to take out their long game, then let the rest of the brave boys funnel into our crossfire even though you’re only contributing about 5% of the total body count? On it.” [FX: pewwwwwwwwww; pew pew pew]

Which reminds me, somewhere in the middle of the campaign my boon companion, my sidekick, my thorn spouted off for awhile about culling tactics and I’m all shut UP maybe shoot a guy once an hour and we’ll talk about “tactics.” Why the game people thought that would fly in any regard in or out of the game is beyond me. ~"Your shooting sucks.” “YOU’RE SHOOTING AT A WALL HALF THE TIME AND LET’S TALK ABOUT THE EXCRUCIATINGLY PAINFUL TWO MINUTES YOU SPENT DANCING AROUND RIGHT NEXT TO THE DEATHTRUK® GOING IN AND OUT OF “COVER” EVEN THOUGH IT COULD SHOOT YOU ALL THE WHILE HOW ABOUT THEM ‘TACTICS’ YOU CHILD”

That’s another recommendation, if you have a sidekick. A whistle. “Come over here and stand right fucking next to me ‒ DON’T TAKE MY SPOT ‒ because your algorithm is embarrassing me and my gameplay. You are heartbreaking my immersion, program segment.” That plus the “What?” command.

“What?” repeat last spoken bit of dialogue
“Whistle/heel/come” stop playing in bulletland and come take cover beside me
“Flank” go around to their side/back and do your sad little plinking

I just made your upcoming open-world sporadic-combat programmed-sidekick game 2.8% better. Standard 8% vig. Godspeed.

What A Combo (Fern Brady) “Plugging the gaps with snacks” / Tim Key

“Do you mind me talking about a food combination on your show?”

Joe [UK]: Fern Brady On Being A Stripper, Autism Diagnosis & School In ‘A Men’s Prison.’

CGP Grey: Grey Grades Canada’s Flags! (And Merry Xmas!)

CANADA FLAGS UNLOCKED [SFX: HORN OF QUALITY SOUNDS THROUGHOUT THE VALLEY]

F.D Signifier: Eminem and the White Rapper Problem.

Aboringday: I Applied HIGH VOLTAGE to Electric Toys! #7 (Christmas Special)

Everybody In The Place: An Incomplete History Of Britain 1984-1992 by Jeremy Deller (2019)

i had seen what’s up doc (1972) in the theatre as a small, problematic child but couldn’t remember any of it. re-watched the “famous” drugstore scene

and they’re charging $67 for a radio. “that seems obscene.” how much were radios back then. 1972 wish book image included. roughly 1/3rd price for what looks like comparable kit.

do not shop at that drugstore.

(one of the previous pages features a radio cassette player with “Vernier slide-rule tuning for station choice” which as it turns out is actually a thing and not some marketing jagoff earning their paycheck)

let’s find a better ryan o’neal film

i should re-watch this

i should do a lot of things

June 1922 Confectioners Journal. Stacy’s Gold Medal Marshmallows. Whomever made this ad was completely high.

And that’s a 1922 high. That’s not an easy high to get.

at some point in the hand-wavey past, i posted an image of what i thought was a conbini employee showing off the latest hi-tech PET bottle crusher/holder machine along with their associated combini store PET bottle crusher/holder machine mascot. The mascot seemed like it was having a bad day, half-lidded eyes and the start of a frown. It was important to me because I am avoiding a deadline to buy a product and i don’t want to buy the product because there’s a lot of ways to screw it up. anyway. i don’t remember when i posted it, but i couldn’t find it and again, important so i started typing various search terms into deepl to convert to japanese like “conbini bottle recycle mascot” etc. i saw ... many mascots. too many. i don’t like most mascots because they have those eyes with the little white dots in them that are supposed to be light reflections just so you are reassured that yes, the mascot has corneas just like you. i like flat face cute mascots with just black circles or the like for eyes, amp up the cartoon aspect. this frog rules. i do not care if it has an associated anime/recycling campaign/key to the city/whatever.

i finally found the bastard, it is named “waketon” and is part of the “Recycling Promotion Division of the Kobe City Environment Bureau, who are well-known for their Kobe City garbage bags.” ah. i couldn’t find the actual photo ‒ it was probably taken by one of the news agencies at the promo event (there are a TON of these ... family mart: “we have a new machine what does a thing” 47 press bureaus: “ON IT”) and because most online newspapers don’t keep much of an archive, it’s on one hard drive in a osaka web newspaper’s closet

if you watch the video you can get a sense of the half-frown/sorta goin’ through the motions feeling waketon puts off

0:22 新しいペットボトルに生まれ変わったペットボトルは大切なプラスチックボトルにご協力をお願いします / New plastic bottles reborn as new plastic bottles, please cooperate with our precious plastic bottles!
0:28 [拍手] [applause]

i’ve seen other versions of waketon in which it is happier, maybe that’s a newer version

at least there’s no white dots in waketon’s eyes

CRUCIAL UPDATE: okay, i think what happened is that i took a snap of the video here like so:

waketon just wants to go back to sleep

Interesting article about pubs briefly replacing banks in 1970s Ireland.

Chill Goblin: WHO IS MORE PUNK: Sex Pistols or Chumbawamba?

60 Minutes: Welcome to Sealand, the world’s smallest state.

draw not eat 2023 (oil pastels; acrylic paint; bad lighting)

Vanity Fair: Edgar Wright Breaks Down Scenes from Shaun of the Dead, Last Night in Soho & More.

Off the Rails Documentary (2016).