Gaming

Just had a go on the new Thimbleweed Park thingy and....

Got a graphics card error message.

After a bit more research it seems that, despite the fact that it's just an 80's style point-and-click game with equally 80's style pixel art, it apparently requires DirectX 12 to run.
DirectX 12???
For pixel art????

What were they thinking?

Seeing as I can't play Thimbleweed...
Skyrim!

Previously...

Valence wrote:

Aela is now nowhere to be seen and I'm facing off against a relentless gang on my own...

And suddenly she turns up again now that the big fight is over!



Thanks for that, Aela! At least I don't have to trail all the way across the country to talk to her.
Anyway I still decided to go back home for a bit before starting another fight for her and on my way I was attacked by a thief. So I killed them while my horse watched...



Gotta keep your steed entertained. And when I looted the thief's body I found that they had a Flawless Ruby!
I've been looking for one of those for absolutely AGES!

But when I got back to Whiterun I found that a cat had got killed at the start of the last quest.



Not my own house cat, thankfully. And it certainly wasn't me that did it, but I did see it there during the scuffle and hoped it had got away but no.
I'll have to try and find somewhere to lay the body because I don't want to see that everytime I walk up to Jorrvaskr.

Geralt (3) has just spent the last hour dying. And dying. And dying.

All at the hands of a ...what's it called again? An Endrega Warrior thing. Well, I said, "at the hands of" but it's really the big clubby tail that's doing me in.
It's one of those things that's double my level and the game keeps warning me to turn back but I have to go that way to meet up with some witch.
Maybe I should start the fight and then just run away.
I suppose that'd be better than the current recurring death. I'm starting to get cramp again from trying to twist my fingers to hit the move/dodge/roll/cast-spell keys all at the same time.

Yeah, I knew it was just a test for his new engine that'd been released as a "quarantine treat" but I still didn't expect pixel art to be so hardware hungry.

Anyway... I moved the dead cat in Skyrim to a better place. I wanted to take it into the Hall Of The Dead but I couldn't get through the doors whilst holding the limp body in front of my face.
So I went round the side of the building and laid it to rest by the bushes. RIP little cat.

I then switched to LA Noire which I haven't played for a while. So long a while that it wouldn't automatically log me in and I had to try and remember another password.
Nope, still couldn't remember but thankfully I DID remember that I'd written it down somewhere.
Much searching later and I logged in and then had to spend a full three minutes clicking on numerous pictures of fire hydrants to prove that I wasn't a robot!

Finally with my humanity confirmed I got to play!
But my driving/navigation is still bad. Took a wrong turn and ended up in someone's garden before having to reverse (reverse!?!) past several trees...



...successfully avoided the fauna but it was carnage back on the road.


Elsewhere, Enderal's skies and landscapes continue to be pretty...



There seems to be a city way over there but I'm not going that way yet. I'm mostly cleaning out the baddies around the vicinity of "my" farm and having a bit of success by taking them out in a slow, methodical way with lots of rest and recuperation in between. And I found a pirate hideout! But like a coward I just sneaked away after stealing some stuff.
Then as darkness fell I started to get attacked by more and more river crabs. During the day they leave you alone and you can walk around freely without any trouble but they seem to be a lot more vicious and numerous at night.
Guess that means it's a good time to go back to the farm and rest until morning.

I tried a few more times to beat that clubby tail insect thing in Witcher 3 but it's just not happening. I wasn't even getting close to killing it. In fact I was lucky if I knocked a few measly pixels off its health bar.
So I got back on Roach and took a long cross-country route that avoided the nasty creature before finally teaming up with that witch.
She doesn't seem to be the best kind of companion though. She does send a few spells towards the wraiths we had to face together, but they just seem to push them back a little rather than do any actual, useful damage. Poor old Geralt has to do the hard work, providing he stays alive and doesn't cough himself to death in that green fog.

Anyway, "enough of that," I said to myself as I went back to Olde London Town to do a bounty hunt where I had to kidnap a baddie and drive her away alive in a carriage to the required delivery point. Went surprisingly well thanks to some unexpected coppers intervening while I was hiding in the bushes.
And after that success I just had a little explore around and found a few guys playing cricket!



I tried to get involved by putting Evie to field at Short Square Leg to hopefully catch that lazy lofted shot off the hips, but the batsman kept going for straight drives before running himself out by coming back for a two that was never there.

I stopped to watch them for a while because it's pretty much the first live sport I've seen for two months!
(I tell a lie of course. There was famously some German football on TV today but that fact ruins my little joke. )