I had Lol-dog for a week. One of the days there was a 'micro-burst' of heavy rainfall followed by some nice lighting. So when I took the dogs out to the trail I toted the Nikon.


Of course they still play like puppies.


Interestingly, over the course of the walk, the aqueduct went from this:


to this:

I finally stepped into the new gen of consoles with Destiny for ps4. No xbone for me. Microsoft angered me far too much with crappy hardware and paid-for internet on 360 followed by the kinect snafu, subsequent lies, and a too-high price point. I'm no Sony fanboy, but a few leaked credit card numbers and prosecuting people who put Linux on their consoles started to pale in comparison to Redmond's transgressions. Sadly, Sony began charging for internet play with ps4, but at least they try to add value with free downloadables.

Why not go PC? A Steambox may be in my future, but I'm okay with the purchase.


So onto Bungie's highly-anticipated non-Halo title. Whatever it was - years in development, $500 million, independence from Microsoft game studios - all the planets have aligned.


The critical response to Destiny has been all over the place. 60 on Gamespot, 78 on IGN, 100 on Official Playstation Magazi... oh right. The interwebs, on the other hand, have been lit up by haters and apologists. Since I'm not one to ramble, I'll just summarize in bullet form:

• "It plays well." Silky smooth. Like Halo.
• "It's basically Halo." Combat mechanics are. Standard weapon loadouts, a few vehicles, grenades.
• "The story is atrocious." Well, there really isn't a story. You go from door to door, fight off dudes, and finally reach the ending cutscene. Apparently Bungie had some issues with retaining writing staff (and head composer).
• "Peter Dinklage sucked, whyyy?." Yep. The vast majority of his lines are read like he'd never seen them before, i.e. emphasis in all the wrong places. Maybe doing voiceovers is much different from on-screen acting, maybe he phoned it in, maybe the story problems bled into the recording booth.
• "There isn't much content." Pretty much. Three planets and the moon with a medium-size overworld and dungeons beneath.
• "There's a loot system!" Meh. As a Borderlands vet, the Destiny loot system feels ho-hum. Gear has rarity and special abilities, but that's about it.
• "Multiplayer is fun." Yes. The maps are pretty well designed, though there are only a handful of them. There are half a dozen game modes, but nothing particularly creative (kill, team kill, capture the ______).
• "F*%# the Cryptarch!" F*%# the Cryptarch.

This video sums it up pretty well.


It's very pretty. Though not shown here, the light source effects are a noticeable step up from the older generation.


Raids are fun, even if there aren't many of them. And the rewards are meh.


So you can only do voicecomms with your fireteam (friends), but that doesn't stop people from exhibiting the classiness that keeps you coming back to connected console gaming.



Apparently Bungie wants Destiny to be the next WoW. The two major events so far have been pretty uninspiring - a series of bounties and a minor tweak on PvP. There are only a couple maxed out gear combos. And leveling is tedious and yields little reward. While basic PvP sustained Halo, Destiny has the newest CoD and MW installments to contend with. DLC might be Destiny's saving grace, but they'll have to think carefully about how to price it.

One time, the army bombed my buddy Keith. He went camping and didn't bother to read the signs, and I guess they were just testing bombs that day. All sorts of stuff too, not just regular bombs. Like biological nerve gas bombs, shrapnel bombs, these bombs that break up in the air into like a hundred smaller bombs-

?