Since you asked…

By Shamus Posted Saturday Aug 28, 2010

Filed under: Personal 77 comments

There’s nothing more tedious than a health-update blog from a sickie. Oh, the gangrene is so much better today. The oozing has nearly stopped and I hardly notice the smell! Thanks so much for the well-wishes everybody! I’d give you all thumbs up but I just had them off yesterday.

But some of you asked. So…

Yes, I’m doing better. I’m free of the merciless pain and burning that defined my existence last week. I’m no longer bumbling around the house, curtains closed, sunglasses on, head down, and wincing whenever something brighter than a cooling ember enters my field of view. That was a rough patch, to be sure. My usual practice when I get sick is to distract myself with movies or games, both of which involve looking at things. So I spent a lot of time focusing on just how uncomfortable I was. And complaining.

But that part is over. My right eye is still slow to adjust, but I can look out the window again as long as I work up to it slowly. The eye is also very blurry, although I strongly suspect that’s just a temporary condition.

Now that the pain is gone I have to say I’m really enjoying the rest. I’ve been running at capacity for half a year now. I have a weekly column, a webcomic, a video series, a let’s play, and a blog, all of which feed on my videogaming. As my workload increased, I cut back on my other hobbies in order to keep up. I couldn’t very well justify spending a half hour with an anime when that same allotment of time with a game could spark an article or a joke.

But this week I let everything slide. (Except the column, which pretty much wrote itself this time.) At one point I discovered that while sitting in front of my monitor was too painful, I could sit across the room from the television. So I sat on the couch with my kids and watched three hours of Avatar: The Last Airbender. My review: That was a really, really good show.

By Saturday I was back to playing videogames. Usually I have to keep playing new games to feed the column, comic, etc. But on Saturday I was able to say “screw it” and play whatever I liked. Which turned out to be Mass Effect. What a tremendous game. I’d forgotten just how good it was in places. It’s also painful to think about how badly the setting gets mangled. It’s like going back and watching The Matrix after seeing Reloaded and realizing that the questions that tantalized us in the beginning turned out to have drooling nonsense for an answer. Alas.

I wish I could play this game, except with Dr. Modin Solus in it. That would be perfect.

So that’s how I’m doing. Getting better. All hail modern medicine.

 


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77 thoughts on “Since you asked…

  1. Lanthanide says:

    Also you didn’t put a post on here about your latest Stolen Pixels, with the 3D TV gizmo. The last post here was Dr Breen’s interview with the cake.

    Edit: Also, first post!

    1. Volatar says:

      I called it out first! http://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/?p=9185&cpage=1#comment-165354

      :P But thats ok

      Glad your feeling better and enjoying yourself Shamus. I do agree on your sentiments on Mass Effect. It really was a good game. I am glad that I ignored the hype, waited until it was cheap, and only then played it. I was able to see everything great in it, instead of expecting all that and only finding flaws. I very much enjoyed it and will go back and play it again sometime.

  2. OEP says:

    Aww, I like Mass Effect 2

    1. Aldowyn says:

      No one (I think) denies that the combat is much improved, as well as the characterization. (Like he said, Mordin Solus. Not the only good one by a long shot, either.)

      The problem is the story is just.. not.. as good. ME1 ends with you wiping out one of the galaxy-destroying Reapers and determining the fate of the galaxy. ME2 has you running around killing mercenaries and space bugs, just so you can kill the space bug base. That’s quite a step (leap, more like) in epic story-telling. Fun as heck, but not very epic. Except for whenever you fire the Cain!

      1. GTB says:

        I didn’t like the new combat insofar as I suddenly got 1/2 the skills and items, and now my gun inexplicably requires ammo. I can only assume that technology somehow de-evolved in the time between the two games.

        I actually thought the first Mass Effect was pretty much perfect in every way. I can’t think of anything I would change about it. Oh yes I can: No fucking tank crap.

        1. Vipermagi says:

          Nooo, not the Mako! :p
          If they gave it mass, and decreased the amount of sixty degree slopes, it would be a lot better.

          I recall weapons in Mass Effect 2 using universal thermal clips that (somehow) absorb all heat produced by firing a slug, and this was more effective than just waiting for the weapon to cool off. Or something. Of course, they didn’t make the thermal clip cool off as well (i.e. regenerate ‘ammo’ when not firing), so it makes absolutely no sense and just feels like plain old ammo.

          1. ima420r says:

            I thought ME2 was a watered down, simplified ME1. They removed the RPG elements from ME1 that I enjoyed and made it nothing but a cover based shooter.

            I played ME1 through a few times, and I only played ME2 for a few missions. Maybe it gets better.

            1. eri says:

              BUT ITS GOT GUNS N SPLOSIONS DONT YOU LIKE GUNS N SPLOSIONS

              I KILL A BITCH

              HE DIE I AM KING OF SPACE

            2. GTB says:

              This. Exactly this. They turned my RPG into gears of war. Except the shooting part isn’t as good as gears of war. So why am I playing this? Where is my awesome rpg? Where are my items, where are my skills, where are my stats? If I wanted a shooter I would have bought a shooter.

              I would have been perfectly content with the EXACT SAME ENGINE from mass effect 1 with absolutely no changes whatsoever, and just a new story. Because that’s what I liked about Mass Effect. The story.

          2. Sumanai says:

            Don’t forget shock absorbers. The mako rose a question in my mind: “doesn’t anyone at Bioware drive a car?”
            Of course, they most likely do, but never do any maintenance themselves. And those who do obviously had nothing to do with the Mako.

            Edit: I checked on the thermal clip -thing on Mass Effect wiki.
            What the hell? How is this supposed to make sense? It took a few seconds for the weapons to cool in ME1, why the hell are these ones disposable? If they wanted to add a more tactical feel on the combat, why not have exchangable clips? If the player is forced to worry about the ammo in the current magazine only that should be enough.

            1. Sumanai says:

              Note that: I meant by the exchangable clips that in-game the characters would take a “used” clip (clip alpha) from the weapon, but it away (on their person) and take a cool one (clip beta) and put it into the weapon. When clip beta heats up, they change it for the now cool clip alpha.

              Maybe even have it so that the weapon doesn’t do all of the mass effecting (or whatever it’s called) inside, but instead the players suit would have the “ammo mass” in highest concentration and it would have output slots for the clips. It would then cool and load the clip with lower concentration “ammo mass” so that the weapon doesn’t heat up so much in actual use (because it doesn’t need to change as much mass in a short period of time).

              In RL, this means that the game wouldn’t have limited ammo, just limited ammo in the current clip. Which should be enough to give combat a more tactical feel while at the same time being more compatible with the established canon.

      2. krellen says:

        I don’t think there was anything, aside from Mordin Solus (the other characters are all pretty much crap), that I liked about ME2. I’m with Shamus; I wish I could have just played ME1 with Mordin Solus instead.

        The combat is not better, the characters (exception already noted) are not better, the story is not better. ME2 spat on something great; I actually consider its crimes worse than what Fallout 3 did to Fallout.

        1. Aldowyn says:

          … Hmm, I seem to be in the vast minority in this particular group of people. Ok, let’s see if I can start a rational discussion here…

          I liked the characters in ME2. Thane was cool, Grunt grew on me, despite the loss of Wrex, and Mordin is hilarious and probably the most fleshed-out of any of the characters– excepting the vets from ME1, Garrus and Tali, and including the Cerberus people.

          Jack was too over-the-top for me, and wth is with that costume? Samara’s Justicar code seems VERY interesting, but she herself just comes off as a goody-goody, and Morinth… I don’t see the attraction here. Legion is part of probably the best story in the entire game, IMHO.

          The Cerberus members just didn’t quite cut it, either.

          How is the combat not better in ME2? Admittedly, the thermal clips thing doesn’t make sense and was put there to cater to the shooter crowd, but apart from that, everything is so much smoother, easier, and more balanced. Oh, and the fact that you can actually SNIPE in ME2…

          One thing I do regret is the inventory system. The one in ME1 was broken, but that doesn’t mean you have to burn it. Most RPGs manage to make every piece of weapon and armor sort-of important. You at least remember that you picked that up. All they had to do was FIX the one from the first one, not trash it completely. They don’t even have upgrades for the weapons that you have to choose between.

          I prefer the skills system the way it is now. Each upgrade makes a difference, and it doesn’t really sacrifice depth for simplicity– it just becomes more simple.

          Anything else I missed? Okay then, feel free to pick it apart now. Looking forward to it, actually.

          1. utzelgrutzel says:

            My problem with the new “better” combat: They had a standard cover-shooter mechanic mixed with an RPG system and replaced it with an standard cover-shooter mechanic without any extras. I now play one of many other games (I don’t like much) without the only interesting thing for me. But they overemphasized the chest-high walls this time. The collectors would still be alive and kicking if they hadn’t based their whole design around chest-high walls ;)

            Yes, now you can snipe easily from the start, but you run out of ammo after 10 shots. Then you are stuck with your handgun and that’s it.I guess that’s what the invisibility thing is for, to get some ammo. I played through the first one with pretty much nothing except the sniper rifle, you just need enough skill points, as would be expected with a RPG system. And then I could still use an assault rifle or shotgun, even if I was crap at it, for whatever came too close.

            1. Aldowyn says:

              you were screwed in ME1 without cover– just less so, because you had overpowered biotics and they couldn’t shoot either.

              I didn’t have as much problems with the shooting in ME1 as many, but they cleaned it up in ME2. And yeah, those chest high walls are blatantly obvious, especially on their base.

              And I never noticed the sniper rifle in ME1 becoming THAT much better with the weaving around.. and it overheats in one shot pretty much no matter what I do. Good excuse to use the explosive rounds, though!

              1. krellen says:

                In ME1, I used to get out of the Mako and Snipe things like Geth Colossi and Thresher Maws, because the Sniper Rifle was just that awesome (and because there was a massive XP bonus for killing Mako-level enemies on foot).

                In ME2, the Sniper Rifle was pretty much crap; never enough shots to do anything, and way less forgiving if you happened to pull the trigger a split-second too late.

                But I really, really, really hate FPSes. Every one since Heretic just isn’t fun; too much focus on “realism” and “action” than on “fun”.

          2. Vipermagi says:

            You could snipe in ME1 as well. The first three snipers were all too terrible to use reliably (the reticule was too large to fit the screen), but once you hit at least the mid-range, they become a very viable option. One of the last sniper rifles has barely any recoil, huge damage, stays perfectly still, and builds up comparatively little heat. Also, since it’s ME 1, you have infinite ammo, because your weapon actually cools off. :)

            re skills: To each their own. The biotics of ME2 are much more fun, and they can be used actively and often. Other than that, I’d rather have an in-between. I liked the vast array of skills to sink points into, but they did have a fairly low return per point.

            Not entirely unrelated: Apparently, ME 2 did have different armors that actually had an effect. Read that a while after I completed the game on a wiki. Either I forgot it again because the bonuses were small and inconsequential, or I never actually found it in the game.

            1. Aldowyn says:

              there were extras you could get from DLCs and stuff. Cerberus Assault armor, the Dragon Age armor, the pre-order bonuses. Plus you found add-ons that you could put on, like extra ammo packs and shock absorbers.

              I must have missed the sniper rifle that stays still… or I just didn’t notice because it was gradual. Ah well, I’ll pay more attention when I make my Paragon Soldier.

        2. Drexer says:

          I’m probably going tog et lynched on this blog for saying this. And in any other case I would join in the lynching myself. But I loved ME2 graphic’s improvement.

          Yeah…

          The thing is, I played both games on my old PC which lacked any capabilities to go over the bare minimum of tgraphics capability. And ME’s graphics as such were quite bland. ME2’s on the other hand, seemed much more beautifully crafted and really added to the atmosphere. The best case I can think of is the view from the balcony when you first go to the Citadel; even if you get the wsettings up to the max, it is still quite bland. In ME2 though, every location had its own flavour and grandeur. Certain spaces cetainly gave me a much more sci-fi vibe.

          You may begin stoning me now.

          1. Aldowyn says:

            I’m just going to mention something I forgot: the level design. Infinitely better in ME2– there just weren’t that many big levels in the first place, but you didn’t have the cookie-cutter mini-missions.

            This goes along with the graphics, because the graphics are part of it. ME just looks cool anyway, though.

            1. Avilan says:

              I DEFINITELY prefer ME2. Better combat. Better characters (they are definitely the OPPOSITE of crap. I love every single one of them. Slightly less impressive ending (but then it is the middle in a trilogy; Empire Strikes Back had a crap ending, this ending is far better), no inventory system with 100 guns that were just worthless loot.

              1. krellen says:

                ESB did not have a crap ending (and this is from someone that thinks it was the worst of the trilogy).

                We, sir, must duel now.

                1. Avilan says:

                  I choose Bigbys Nucklear Missile at 1.000.000 paces.

                2. krellen says:

                  All right. My weapon is the Death Star.

          2. krellen says:

            Played both on the 360. The level designs were different (though still just variations of straight tunnels with enemies), but I didn’t notice that much difference in graphic quality.

  3. Thank you for the update. I’m sincerely glad that you’re doing better.

    I’ve always wondered how you manage such a prolific writing schedule. Good that you’re getting some rest. Sounds like you needed it!

    Leslee

  4. Josh says:

    Glad to hear you’re better!

    Go get some rest if you can.

  5. McNutcase says:

    Modern medicine is great. Except when it isn’t, like when you discover by losing the ability to stand or speak coherently that you have an allergy to certain antibiotics…

  6. Jay says:

    Do you think once again you would be in the cart instead of pulling it? Remembering old post:
    http://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/?p=1247

    1. KremlinLaptop says:

      Shamus, you should do a repost of that post. That looks like a lot of fun.

      I’ve been riding motorcycles ever since I could kick-start my first one as a result I’ve had the medieval equivalent horse throw me off, get smashed off from underneath me by a charging elephant, had the horse land on me and so forth and so on.

      I think I would have survived all of those in medieval times right up until the second time I broke my right leg. I remember sitting on the ground afterwards, the motorcross bike sputtering to death nearby in… well just as a sorry state as myself. I remember very clearly that it didn’t actually hurt at the time, I don’t at least remember it hurting — possibly because it was so bloody painful that my brain went, “Fuck that shit, I’m gonna start producing happy making chemicals instead,” or something. So I’m sitting there, I know my leg is broken but I want to see it, because god damn if those jeans I was wearing weren’t bulging in all manner of directions that made it look like someone had shoved a pile of tree branches up my pants leg. ‘lo and behold I’m greeted by a sizeable chunk of my tibia which has attempted to escape from within my body.

      Me surviving my own stupidity was no miracle as some people have suggested afterwards; no my survival was due to a boatload of anti-biotics and the fact that my leg is pretty much as good as it has ever been and I don’t limp is down to having half an aircraft carrier worth of metal bolted to my lower leg.

      Medieval times would not have been kind to me.

      1. Sumanai says:

        I think the medical term is “happy juice”. But seriously, you were in a shock.

  7. Cuthalion says:

    Awesome! Glad you’re recovering. God bless.

  8. Aldowyn says:

    I’m glad you’re better, Shamus. I have a friend who has/had an abscess in his tooth, and he seemed pretty much in agony.

    And I wish I could play ME3, with ME1’s story, and ME2’s combat and characterization, plus plenty of new stuff. Oh, and implement some lessons learned from Dragon Age.

    Of course, since that would be way better than ME2, and IGN named THAT the best Xbox 360 game EVER, that much awesomeness would probably make the world explode. (or at the very least ruin everything else forever…)

    My random game of the weekend: Ocarina of Time. Only two dungeons in. It’s weird, some of it I remember and some of it I don’t. I don’t remember how far I’ve gotten. Also liberally sprinkled with BF2142 and Assassin’s Creed (The first one), and hoping to get Halo 3’s Legendary co-op done sometime before the 14.

  9. TheDefenestrator says:

    Avatar is one of my favorite shows. It’s too bad the movie is terrible, from what I hear. Fortunately, the original creators are making a new series that’s supposed to air next year, called Avatar: The Legend of Korra.

    1. SolkaTruesilver says:

      Yup. The next Avatar is a Water-tribe origin, and it’s..

      You know what? I’ll hold the spoilers. TvTropes has an interesting article if you want more info.

      The movie was bad. Except 3 things:

      1) The bending itself. Not the story linked with the Bending, but just all the Elemental Powers. They were simply AWESOME
      2) The intelligent warfare deployed by the Fire Nation. It was nice to see a coherent tactic centering around magical ability, something you don’t see often.
      3) The Fire Nation warships. If you didn’t found them terribly awesome, or awesomely terrible, you have no soul to seed fear into. These are on par with the Star Destroyer when I think of “Evil Ship”

      1. GTB says:

        1) The bending itself. Not the story linked with the Bending, but just all the Elemental Powers. They were simply AWESOME

        I disagree. In the cartoon the pseudo-martial arts movements they do control the elements that sort of swirl around with them as they move. In the movie, they just did some random kung fu and things would happen. I found it disappointing. I was expecting a lot more weaving around with fire and a lot less “do this move to cast fireball.”

        I agree with your other points though.

        God what a terrible movie.

    2. DaveMc says:

      Really? *Fantastic*! I recently powered through the entire series, and I was sad to get to the end. (And sad to see what happened to the movie, though having recently viewed the whole TV show was perhaps the only way one could have understood at least what they *thought* they were doing, there. I can’t imagine what people who had never seen the show could have made of it. Helpful hint: you *cannot* fit an entire TV season into 1.5 hours, don’t even try.)

      1. Sumanai says:

        I haven’t seen the movie, but:
        They tried fitting the first season in the movie? That should be possible, but you’d have to drop everything that isn’t vital to the story. But it would be better to just come up with something new with the same setting.

        1. guy says:

          Apparently they also stupided up parts they kept, especially the earth bender prison, which is just a prison, on the ground.

          1. Sumanai says:

            What. But that doesn’t…

            God damn those dumbasses.

      2. SolkaTruesilver says:

        I think the tv executives saw that the 1st season was named: “Book 1: Water” and said it’s easy to adapt a book into a movie

    3. Christine says:

      Ohhh! More Avatar! More (good) Avatar!

  10. Axle says:

    Nice to hear you are getting better.

    These days I am replaying ME2 as a renegade with a character I find on the net, which is close enough to my ME1 character (I lost the save files, so my first playthorugh was with the default character).
    It’s a great game (despite the story) and it’s nice to see how conversations play out differently when you pick different responses (although, it’s a shame it has no effect on the way the story folds or your character development).

    Did you play any of the DLCs?

    I am considering buying one of them and I don’t really know if it’s worth the 7$ price tag(money is pretty tight right now).

    Have nice week.

    1. jdaubenb says:

      Allow me to offer my opinion.

      Kasumi DLC: A new squaddie, a new power, a new submachine gun and a new mission.
      The whole thing (Kasumi and her loyalty mission) had a very Anime-esque feeling to it, especially the final battle (it is hard to describe without spoiling the whole thing).
      What impressed me the most was the great camerawork during the more personal scenes – it really shows how far Bioware have come in terms of cinematic story telling.

      The Overlord Pack, I only played at a friends computer. As far as I can tell you get 5 or 6 missions of shooting up Geth and jumping puzzles with the Firewalker-Tank-Thing.
      It is longer than the Kasumi DLC, but in my opinion offers less content.

      The Kasumi DLC doesn’t advance the game’s storytelling either, but it offers a few cute ideas about the game world and especially the state of Earth and the local cluster.
      The Overlord Pack on the other hands is just another Subject Zero Loyalty missin “Look-at-Cerberus-being-evil”-thing.

      Conclusion: I enjoyed the Kasumi DLC more, but I don’t think she is essential or adds anything great to the game.

      Oh, just so you know: Kasumi works the same way Zaeed does: She sits around on your ship, eating all the space pie, and can be prompted to spout her life story. I still find it astounding (flabbergasting?) that the guys and gals at Bioware chose to refuse their DLC NPCs a real dialog tree.

      My honest advice would be to buy neither, call me a miser if you will, but you just don’t get enough bang for your buck, seeing as $7 could buy you one or two nice budget titles or something.

      1. Axle says:

        Thanks for the deatiled response.

        It is very tempting to buy meself some extra content for a game I like, but I think I will restrain myself this time and won’t buy any of them.

        I will keep the money for a good Steam sale…

  11. Neil Polenske says:

    1st: Well wishes on a speedy recovery. I too recently had a bout of eye trouble, though it incapacitated for only a couple hours or so.

    2nd: Avatar! Yes it IS a good show! Very good! INCREDULOUSLY GOOD! It’s as good as the movie adaptation is horrible. Whatever has been said prior to my post or after, there was NOTHING redeemable about that insufferable movie.

  12. Thedark1owns says:

    Avatar is a phenomenal series. The movie isn’t as bad as most people think. Its a mediocre movie that is being compared to a shining example of modern animation. Of course its going to be seem bad. It did a lot of things right but it got all of the important parts wrong.

    1. GTB says:

      No. It was just bad. All the little kid actors were terrible, it looked like they were reading cue cards. Even if they had gotten the special effects right, and not tried to squeeze in a whole season of a show into two hours, the acting STILL would have caused the movie to bomb.

      1. Sumanai says:

        So yet again claims to “we didn’t have correct ethnic actors, because there aren’t suitable good ones” is proven to be full of bullshit. Yet the next time a movie adaptation is coming for something and the cast gets either whitewashing or ethnic shift hollywood will claim that again and some naive buggers will believe them. Personally it’s the first sign that the movie will suck, because it basically guarantees that the casting was done by lazy idiots.

        I wouldn’t make it such a big thing, but from what I’ve heard there are plenty of actors in and around hollywood from various backgrounds that never get a chance because of this crap. It’s either the casting director being lazy (“Hold auditions? Are you crazy?”) or someone being racist (“majority of target audience is white, so they can only sympathize with white people”).

    2. KremlinLaptop says:

      M. Night Shyamalan — there’s just no possible objective way the movie could be good. There just isn’t when that man is involved.

      I mean c’mon, people at movie theatres boo trailers to his films!

      1. Sumanai says:

        Shyamalan might make a good director, but first he’d have to get his head out of his ass. And stop thinking the world has only white, indian and middle-eastern people.

        Graah! Sumanai whine impotently!

  13. Maldeus says:

    I would prefer you write less often about a wider variety of things than more often about nothing but video games. The problem is that practically everything you do is either something I really don’t want to see die (like Spoiler Warning) or something you’re paid to do (like your Let’s Play series at the Escapist), so I’m not sure what you could actually cut.

    1. Syal says:

      I still think they could make Spoiler Warning weekly, instead of twice weekly, and fill that space with random stuff. I personally miss the D&D worldbuilding articles.

      Did I mention this before, or did I just think about mentioning it?

      1. Maldeus says:

        I think I miss practically every discontinued feature this site’s ever seen discontinued. I liked the anime posts, the D&D posts, the geek culture posts, and so on and so forth. When I first finished my archive trawl of Twenty Sided Tale (around the time the third Experienced Points was released), I was under the assumption that Experienced Points would replace the Game Design posts on this blog, but it seems to me to focus more on industry politics than anything else.

        I do agree, however, that making Spoiler Warning less frequent would be a good idea. I wouldn’t even advise you take up another project in the meantime, even if it’s something you’ve been wanting to do as soon as you get the time since February of 2004. Personally, I think both you and your blog would benefit if you freed up a bit of your schedule for just playing whatever you want, watching whatever you want, and doing whatever you want. And if whatever you want is writing a one-shot article (or a short series) about the stuff you’ve been doing, go for that.

  14. GTB says:

    I would totally read a Shamus Young anime column. You should sacrifice something you don’t need, like.. I dunno, food or sleep in order to make that happen.

    1. rofltehcat says:

      I agree to this.
      Who needs sleep, anyways? ;)

      Good to hear you are getting better, Shamus.

  15. jdaubenb says:

    Good to see you are back on your feet.
    Allow me to add another scoop of “best wishes” to the pile.

  16. KremlinLaptop says:

    You know only the other night I got done watching Wild Wild West and I enjoyed it despite the badness and incredible stupidity. It’s the sort of stupidity my brain is willing to accept and process with a minor bit of adjustment, a bit like the diesel engines in military vehicles into which nearly any slush that’s combustible can be poured and it’ll run.

    Afterwards, while perhaps drooling on myself slightly, I went to look at the IMDB page for the movie and clicked on trivia. Apparently Will Smith turned down starring in The Matrix to do Wild Wild West instead.

    …You know I’m pretty sure the Reloaded and Revolutions would have at least been bearable if the suave charm of Will Smith had been involved (I enjoyed The Matrix despite the presence of Keanu, not because of it). Seriously, I even liked “I, Robot” even though the nerdy side of my brain was going with the world’s most narm filled “NOOOOOOO!” all through it. Why? Will Smith.

    So… glad you’re feelin’ better, Shamus.

    1. Keeshhound says:

      Do you know what role he turned down? I can’t even begin to imagine what The Matrix would have been like with a black Neo who could actually, you know; emote.

      1. KremlinLaptop says:

        It was the role of Neo — at least wiki says so. Honestly, Will Smith as Neo would have been absolutely fantastic. I keep wishing he’d be in an actually good movie because brothaman can act his ass off but gets stuck in mostly shitty or not very serious movies, in most of which his presence is the saving grace.

        Seriously, though, I bet he would have rocked as Neo.

        1. Athan says:

          I keep wishing he'd be in an actually good movie because brothaman can act his ass off but gets stuck in mostly shitty or not very serious movies…

          The Pursuit of Happyness:

          http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0454921/

          1. KremlinLaptop says:

            On that I got the movie and… holy fuck. That was wonderful and amazing.

            Fuck, I really like Will Smith. I… still hum the Fresh Prince theme song everytime I seem him, of course.

          2. Blackbird71 says:

            “The Legend of Bagger Vance” was another sort of different role for him as well.

  17. utzelgrutzel says:

    Your description of the symptoms sounds like you need to check your post processing settings ;)

    Anyway, good you’re feeling better and get well soon.

    1. eri says:

      He’s played so many modern games that his body has adjusted to give him constant light bloom, lens flare and depth of field blur. Still working on that colour saturation problem, but I’m sure he’ll go colourblind soon enough.

      1. Sumanai says:

        Soon his body will adjust and he’ll keep hitting doorframes and be unable to climb hip-/over the knee level walls. The scary part? We’ll all end up with those symptoms.

        1. Robyrt says:

          On the plus side, regenerating health is a nice consolation prize for being unable to open any non-essential door.

          1. Sumanai says:

            Just hope that the bathroom door doesn’t end up as one.

  18. neolith says:

    Glad to hear you’re doing better! :)

  19. SSR says:

    You do all this, and have kids!? How?!

  20. Ravens Cry says:

    I am just glad you are feeling much better and could spend some time with the younglings, Shamus.

  21. Sam says:

    How funny. I’ve been watching Avatar: The Last Airbender rather heavily over the last couple of weeks, and I finished the series today. I agree. Good show.

  22. Christine says:

    Glad you are feeling better. Avatar is a fantastic series and I have watched it over and over with my kids.

  23. Blackbird71 says:

    Shamus,

    I’m glad to hear you’re doing better, I hope things continue to improve.

    It’s funny you should mention missing watching anime; just recently I was thinking about how I’ve been missing reading your anime reviews!

    I have to echo the sentiments of those who miss your blog posts on topics unrelated to video games, such as anime, D&D, etc. It wasn’t all that long ago that only the occasional blog post here had anything to do with video games (somehow I think the increase can be blamed on DRM… it seems to me that’s about when it started). It’s wonderful that you’ve found a way to make money from the projects that started here, and I’m happy for your success, but at the same time it’s a bit sad to think that all of that came at the cost of some of the hobbies that originally fueled this blog.

  24. Zaghadka says:

    My kids love Avatar too. Don’t watch the M. Night movie version. It will cause you all pain. So much pain.

    Feel better.

  25. Ander the Halfling Rogue says:

    Avatar is aweome. I would’ve loved reading your analysis of it, but in the end, most things I’ve read start and/or come back around to that short statement: That was a really, really good show.

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