Gaming

Yep, should have picked another video as an example. But that was the Dan Dare one! I had that game and remembered that loading screen to be one of the longer ones. Although the 128k exclusives were the worst. I didn't have one of those but the other kids at school who did would often say that some games took nearly 10 mins to load!

Meanwhile in hard drive land... I completed Half Life 2 Ep 1 last night (sadly I did need a bit of internet assistance to find the conveniently placed rockets. I was too busy getting killed to see that ladder.)
So with that done I'm now "allowed" to install something else.

I'm not riding a dragon but I probably should be fighting one in Skyrim. That's the next quest of the main story and I think I was supposed to have done it ages ago but after 35 hours of play I still can't get around to doing it. I've told myself that I'll do it when I get to Level 10 but now that I'm almost at 9 maybe I'll put it off again.
Lazily exploring is just too enjoyable.

I did do that story bit in Morrowind though, retrieving the magic thing from the dead thing in the tombs. There were lots of other interesting things to loot in those tombs but they were all too high and out of reach. You're obviously supposed to have a levitation spell. And I don't.
I'm not great at ANY magic really. I can use enchanted stuff and scrolls but my own spells and potions have a 100% failure rate. It's my own fault for being an Imperial and not improving my shoddy magic stats. (At least in Skyrim I'm a Breton which offers a better start in magic.)
But I got the important item and returned it and then got to speak to the Wise Woman who proceeded to give me an enormous exposition dump! After much reading.... I had to read some more.... and some more. And then there was a little bit more!
Now that's what I call a "story" quest.

I left Alan Wake in my library for now and instead installed Just Cause 2.
Upon running it I was greeted with another glorious example of a lip-sync-lagging cut scene!
The last thing that did that was Assassins Creed and I sort of solved it (almost) by turning off the post-processing effects. It seems to be the over-the-top depth of field, excessive bloom and unnecessary film grain that cause all that. Just Cause doesn't have those options in the settings so I had to put commands in the launch options.
It's a little better now and the game is good fun, all that destruction and freedom to use anything you can get your hands on does remind me of Mercenaries. Although it's nowhere near as slick as that older game. The controls can be a little clunky and it's also a bit buggy too. It seems to freeze every time I quit to desktop, forcing me to fiddle with the task manager.
At the moment that's a mild irritation but if it continues then it's gonna get old very soon.