Meet you back here in half an hour. What are you going to do? What I always do - stay out of trouble... Badly.
Tuesday, June 14
Wakfu: Short Take
I'll post more on My Little Pony and Wakfu when I have a bit of free time, but here's a very quick rundown of the latter:
Wakfu the animated series feels at first like an attempt to either capitalise on or promote (or both) Wakfu the mumorpuger. And despite a strong opening and some interesting world building, the first half of the series* devolves into an only moderately entertaing travelogue-with-monsters.
Fortunately, once you reach the midpoint, it starts to pick up. Then it picks up some more. Then it picks up some more. Then it picks up a whole lot more, one by one the characters take a well-earned level in badass** and the ending is pretty damn awesome.
It doesn't hurt that much of the second half is spent in the Sadida Kingdom, and the Sadida*** women are gorgeous.
I like the character designs and artwork a lot, the voice acting is pretty solid, and the story does deliver if you stick with it. Certainly better than you'd expect from a game tie-in.
Recommended.
* Actually, the first season from 2008; there's a second season airing right now. ** Or in Evangelyne's case, a level in A-10 Warthog. Which is the same thing, only more so. *** Yes. And the chronomancers are called Xelor, and the healers are Eniripsa.
1
my younger sister also like cartoons, she can watch them for hours one after another untill my father won't switch off the computer. in her opinion the best cartoon is rapunzel. absolutely amazing everything. i advise you to look
Posted by: Artym Tverdov at Friday, June 17 2011 07:27 PM (y+NTh)
That explains the shop specialising in random items.
Quote: Yeah, well, helping jam with legs defending three apples and two potatoes, I'm not calling that nobility.
Speaking of the mumorpuger as opposed to the animated series, I do like the art style and it looks like it could be fun. If I ever get any time off work, I'll give it a try.
1
If you can play for free, how do they make money?
Posted by: Steven Den Beste at Sunday, June 12 2011 11:44 PM (+rSRq)
2
Not sure in this case, but other games make it so you can play for free but can pay for goodies that are otherwise hard to get. Billy vs. Snakeman works that way.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at Monday, June 13 2011 12:01 AM (PiXy!)
3
What I've seen, typically, is that you can only play so far for free. In Pirates of the Caribbean, you can't level up past a certain point; all skills can only go to level 2, you can only buy the weakest few ships, and so on. In Wizard 101, you can only explore about half the first world--and there are 6 or so. In Wizard, there's a hard limit--you simply can't enter some zones. In Pirates, you can (IIRC) sail anywhere, but you'll get your head handed to you. Free Realms caps your professions at level 5, and so on.
And of course there's other things--like in Wizard 101, you can get mounts that increase your ground speed quite a bit; but the ones you can buy with in-game money are ridiculously expensive because they're time-limited; the only perma-mounts require real money.
Posted by: RickC at Wednesday, June 15 2011 07:27 AM (xKMZ6)
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Tuesday, June 07
Codex Alera
By Jim Butcher
Book 1: The Furies of Calderon
Book 2: Academ's Fury
In this work, Butcher asks the question: Does unearned power turn people into amoral cretins? And answers it with a resounding yes.
The only problem is, that accounts for the entire dramatis personae.
There is still something of a trainwreck fascination at work, but I can't say I've actually enjoyed the series so far. The contrast to the Dresden Files novels couldn't be more marked: Harry Dresden has earned the readers' respect and support by fighting and sacrificing for every inch he has gained.
The characters infesting the Codex Alera, on the other hand, are a bunch of whiny children. Whiny psychopathic children. With learning disabilities.
1
Great. So, I couldn't keep reading "Dresden" because it seemed like for every inch of ground Harry gained, someone pulled a new rug out from under his feet. "Unrelentingly grim" was my verdict after a few books. Looks like this is another Butcher series I'll have to avoid... whiny psychopathic children? That was my verdict of the Robert Jordan books, which I gave up on partway through the fifth volume...
Posted by: GreyDuck at Tuesday, June 07 2011 12:44 AM (3m7pZ)
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I'll have to differ with you there. Not just Harry, but all the major characters in the Dresden Files get their crowning moments of awesome, because they had to fight so hard for it. It's grim, but by no means unrelenting.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at Tuesday, June 07 2011 01:06 AM (PiXy!)
3
Depends on how far you got. In the first few, Butcher was still feeling his way around the world, and it had a bit of monster-of-the-week about it. He broke out of that, and managed to acquire an excellent supporting cast. There is a general escalation of power on both sides, but not a real Sorting Algorithm of Evil; Harry is usually in way, way over his head, and wins by being tough, smart, lucky, and by earning the support of some very interesting friends and enemies. The villains don't have to keep getting more powerful to pose a real challenge to him.
The short-story collection has some real gems as well, although the first few show how far he's come as a writer. I think it includes everything except the recent story from Marcone's point of view, which is a lot of fun.
-j
Posted by: J Greely at Tuesday, June 07 2011 01:30 AM (2XtN5)
4
The Codex Alera does get better, though Tavi is no Harry Dresden, even by the end.
Apparently Butcher wrote the series on a bet; he said that you could take the worst idea and with good writing, turn it into a good story.
The idea proposed was combining the lost Roman legion tale with Pokemon.
And of course, I can't find the source for that any more. I didn't make it up, I swear.
Posted by: wfgodbold at Wednesday, June 15 2011 07:18 AM (uqErj)
5The idea proposed was combining the lost Roman legion tale with Pokemon.
Hah! That's exactly what it is!
Posted by: Pixy Misa at Wednesday, June 15 2011 12:34 PM (PiXy!)
Power failure in Seattle's SoftLayer datacenter. I mean, SoftLayer's Seattle datacenter. I think. About 20 out of 30 servers at my day job fell over. Yes, they have redundant power supplies and are in theory connected to two UPSes each. Anyway....
By some stroke of good luck, all four key servers in our data path stayed up the entire time.
Everything else rebooted. Eventually. Except for our cloud components, which are dead as a doornail.
1
Strange that should happen even though they are on UPSs.
Posted by: Steven Den Beste at Sunday, June 05 2011 06:24 AM (+rSRq)
2
I don't have all the details, but what happens all too often in big datacenters is that when the power goes off, either a UPS or power distribution circuit fails. Better than what happened a couple of years ago at The Planet - one of their UPSes exploded, and took out an entire wall.
When I was in the telco game, we had redundant power supplies and independent paths to everything - and a DR site on hot standby - but of course, that cost an absolute fortune.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at Sunday, June 05 2011 06:20 PM (PiXy!)
3
And the UPS is only effective if everything is plugged into it. Oh and its tested! And how often do you think they get the chance to do that lol. The classic one I say was that everything was working fine, until someone realised that the backup generator had no fuel in it! poof. Lights out.
Posted by: Tod at Friday, August 31 2012 10:14 PM (l96u5)
1
Andrea Libman deserves an ice cream sundae for that.
Posted by: Brickmuppet at Sunday, June 05 2011 03:04 AM (EJaOX)
2
The amazing thing is that she plays both Pinkie Pie and Fluttershy - characters that are all but opposites, and sound nothing alike, and yet she's perfect for both.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at Saturday, June 11 2011 02:07 PM (PiXy!)
