Oliin

Doesn't that definition pretty much apply to almost anything in this game? From combat rewarding you randomly with salvage, recipes, shards and whatnot all the way to the Incarnate trials. Oh, and don't forget the whole rolling for random rewards using merits and AE tickets.

This, but then beyond that #5.

I have to say, I haven't really liked any Bay directed films other than The Rock.

It's somewhat hard to effectively discount a dollar without eventually just giving away a ton of things for free.

Sure, it goes $1->$0.88->$0.75 but that's also 12% and 25% off each in the pack.

I'm still not sure how many I'm going to actually buy, but I do anxiously await their addition to the T9 repeatable rewards section of the reward 'tree'. I have a surfeit of reward tokens and nothing that I really want to spend them on at the moment.

I'd guess they'll be rolled over to the market either shortly after the initial rush of pack purchasing dies down to a certain level or more likely it will happen around the time the next pack gets added to the game.

That is, of course, assuming that they're successful. If they aren't then who knows, maybe around when the idea's deemed unsuccessful.

Meh, wouldn't have been bad if they had replaced it with a costume that actually looked good.

Well obviously to each their own, but even though it's probably my favorite new hair in a while I don't really think it looks that fantastic in the picture either. It is in the character creator, so maybe look at it there.

I'm personally not a huge fan of the belt though I'd probably still use it on a character or two. It's nifty though in that the metal studs on the thing are shiny and reflective. Yay for ultra mode or something like that.

Hmm, indeed I did. For some reason I read the part I quoted as being a mostly separate idea from the previous paragraph ... which is why I only quoted that part.

I would at least suggest spending 40 points on the female hair. It's only my opinion, but it's actually pretty nice.

That may not be something that was terribly interesting to you, but it was important footage in the framework of the movie. Those things help advance the plot and Andrew's character. They're the catalyst that eventually causes him to snap at the end. Without those things happening he doesn't feel like the outcast apart from his group again and we don't really see why he has that deep core of anger that causes him to lash out.

Sure we see a bit of bullying at school, but that's not really a good reason for the things he does, the story needs more. We could just be told that he has issues at home, but that's not good story telling by any stretch of the term.

Too often nowdays people ignore the good storytelling aspect of action and science fiction films and just focus on the special effects and action scenes. I've always found that fun, but not terribly satisfying and I don't find them to be movies that I can watch again and again. Luckily there have been a few movies in the last few years that bucked that trend (Source Code, MI:Ghost protocol, Chronicle) for which I couldn't be happier (and in the case of the Mission Impossible movie ... completely surprised).

I think that's partly because that list has some incredibly broad points. I mean one of them is 'impulsiveness or failure to plan ahead'. Also because several of those things are also indicative of 'teenager'; notably the failing to conform to social norms and irresponsibility. As you've noted most people grow out of that phase which is probably why there's the 'over 18' stipulation.

Really I think the big thing here is you're calling people who fit the criteria of that list sociopaths, which (to my understanding) isn't true. People who fit 3 or more criteria from that list have 'Antisocial personality disorder' of which sociopaths and psychopaths are but a subset, not the whole. Notably sociopaths and psychopaths display a marked lack of remorse for their actions. Now, often teens don't fully understand the consequences of their actions, but that's not nearly the same thing.

Of course, I'm not a Psychiatrist, so ....

While emotions do have a tendency to be very irrational, I really don't think that having ones actions effected by their emotions is a fool, a weakling or a chump. Actually, not having emotions kind of makes someone somewhat of a sociopath.

And really Matt did try to stop Andrew. Sure he didn't immediately jump to killing his cousin/childhood friend, but he did eventually do what was needed. First Matt tried to talk him down and reason with him, then he progressed to trying to beat Andrew down (which didn't work since Andrew was the stronger of the two of them) and finally he used a cheap shot to take Andrew out even though he obviously didn't want to.

I might be able to agree with you if 'Captain Useless' and 'Apex' had just been cursory friends. But given that they were not only friends since childhood but family I can't quite.

I know those sort of bonds don't actually matter to some people, but to others ... like for instance 'Captain Useless' they do. I could even see him feeling like if he'd been a better friend then things wouldn't have turned out the way the did.

I would have seen it as a midnight showing if they actually did those around here. For having a bunch of college kids in town surprisingly few of them actually seem to go to movies.

Anyhoo, even given the positive reviews it's been getting I ended up liking Chronicle much more than I thought I would. Max Landis' writing is what hit it out of the park for me. While there was the spot at the end where the dialogue was somewhat hokey for the rest of the movie it was pretty believable and in a lot of cases just straight up funny. A really well-done and entertaining job for his first film.


Also as someone who suffers from motion sickness to the point where Blair Witch made me ill ... Chronicle was easily the most watchable 'found footage' movie so far. Mostly because I think the ability of your main characters to float the camera around in lovely steady-cam and crane shots whenever they're alone (or later on just whenever they want) helps a bit.

Actually, calling it a found footage film's just a bit off really since that's not the idea really. It's more that we're watching the movie through the lens of cameras in general since the POV tends to switch between different cameras in a scene. Possibly another thing improving the movie's general watchability.

Overall I'm pleasantly and happily surprised by the film. I'd give it an 8/10.

It was unfortunately part of a limited time costume bundle. The Halloween Costume Bundle. Chances are that it'll come around again this Halloween.

From a story design standpoint I really tend to agree with you.

On the other hand, from a software development standpoint ... not so much. Sometimes someone's solution to a problem is about clear as mud and if they didn't document their code adequately it can take a lot of effort to figure out just what the heck it's doing.

It was back in December of '07. The same patch also raised Blaster's base ranged damage to be in line with Scrapper's melee damage and changed defiance into its current form.

http://wiki.cohtitan.com/wiki/Patch_Notes/2007-12-11

It was not a terribly recent change and the HP buff itself was even further back. Way in Issue 5 (August 31, 2005).

A lot has changed with the game since those things were added to Blasters.

Bah. It's always the fault of jerk hackers when things go to the Americans. I thought everybody knew that. I mean it's obvious right?

The marinade is probably similar if you take just the wet ingredients only. The dish as a whole looks relatively tasty on its own merits, but that could be my love of five spice powder speaking.

Well, since you started it.
I used to have a recipe for fried chicken that was absolutely amazing. You only fried it for a bit but then finished it off in the oven, but before you put it in the oven you basted it with a mix of honey, soy sauce and sake. Then you used the leftovers of that mix as a dipping sauce.

Best fried chicken ever. And I lament my loss of that recipe regularly (found it back in the mid '90s on a random website).

Just a note, but Blasters and Scrappers have the same damage scale mod of 1.125. Though I think blasters actually use their 1.0 melee damage mod for their melee attacks and scrappers just use their melee damage mod for their ranged attacks instead of their .5 ranged damage mod.

Not that I think the scrapper's ranged damage mod should be .5 mind you. That's too low for a damge AT. Still, a 1.0 ranged mod for them never struck me as unreasonable.

If you're using snipe in combat, could you tell me how you manage to get around it being one of the worst single-target damage powers for DPS and damage per activation in a blaster's primary? That's an honest question by the way. If you've found a way to make snipes not suck when used during a fight please share.

Pretty much any time I ever thought about using a snipe in-combat it occurred to me that I'd be able to do more damage faster by just using my normal blasts instead. That's pretty much the big problem with snipes. There's really no payoff to the big long windup.

I actually rather like the new female hairstyle, and the jeans work on a couple of my characters (without the patterns anyway).