Contents
Reading
Playing
alChandler's Halls
Spreading joy since 1999
Yasuke
That's Yasuke in his new armor. He got it by raiding a castle and raiding a castle is kind of strange. The castle was owned by one of the guys on my assassination list, so it was cool for Yasuke to just go in there and start lopping heads. But if someone rings the alarm bell then you're the bad guy. So, as in other games in the series, if you come across and alarm bell you need to disable it.
When I finished Act One I was level 12 and the next plot area was level 18, so I've been grinding a bit. I was level 15 before I entered Nijo Place, after Yasuke's blood bath I turned level 16 so it might be time to get back to the plotline. I'm 40 hours into the game and I still haven't begun Act Two; it looks like I'll be in Japan for some time.
April 1, 2025
A Take Charge Kind of Guy
There's stuff that I do twice a year, get my car's oil changed, clean the coffee maker, those kind of things; but the one I really hate is changing the filter in the furnace. The furnace is located in the laundry closet and at the best of times it's a squeeze to get in there. And unfortunately one of my knees is reminding me that it's still bad (the knees do that at rare intervals).
Never the fucking less, instead of waiting a week or two I dragged my aging body into the laundry closet and replaced the damned filter. Then I gave Newt a tube of Churu as a reward for putting up with me. After that, the rest of April's tasks are a breeze.
April 1, 2025
The Great Gatsby
The Great Gatsby was Diane McCaughan's favorite book. She got me to read it and while it's not my favorite book, it is pretty damned good and I reread it from time to time. This exchange at Gatsby's funeral between Nick Carraway and Owl-eyes, who was drunk at one of Gatsby's parties, always gets to me:
We straggled down quickly through the rain to the cars. Owl-eyes spoke to me by the gate.
"I couldn't get to the house," he remarked.
"Neither could anybody else."
"Go on!" He started. "Why, my God! they used to go there by the hundreds."
He took off his glasses and wiped them again outside and in.
"The poor son-of-a-bitch," he said.
Nick, Owl-eyes and Gatsby's father were the only people who showed up.
March 28, 2025
Raining Cats and Dogs
Assassins Creed Shadows has very good rain, the best I've seen in awhile. But they don't have very good cats and dogs, here's a video of Yasuke interacting with a friendly cat. It looks likke a 10th gneration Aibo.
It is possible to make a game with a natural looking cat, Stray comes to mind. I had issues with that game but the cat was very well done.
I know that pets weren't high on the dev's list of priorities, they're just window dressing. But if you're not going to do it well, why bother? Having gotten that kvetch out of the way, may I say that Assassins Creed Shadows is very, very good. By the way, I wonder if people are into horses like the horses in the game?
Update: According to this Reddit thread the horses aren't that great either.
March 27, 2025
Assassins Creed Shadows
Say what you want about the Assassins Creed series, their photo mode is nice.
March 27, 2025
The Dragon of Brodda's Hill
I used to have a thing on this page called Writing of Mine That doesn't Suck. The stuff there did suck, most of it, but I had an affection for The Dragon of Brodda's Hill and I was sad when I thought Carnifax and Sir Sardok were gone for good. So I'm glad I was able to pull the story from the Internet Archive and post it here again. And with that the reconstruction of alChandler's Hall is at an end, at least for the near future. I may repost one or two things later but for the moment I'm done.
March 20, 2025
Problem Solving
I'm not good at solving puzzles, never have been, keep that in mind. When I moved this page to Bluehost, Chrome had no problem but Firefox kept flagging it as insecure. It's taken me a month but I think I solved the problem. Of course, most people didn't notice a thing. Chrome's has a 66.3% market share, followed by Safari at 17.99%, Edge at 5.33%, Firefox at 2.62%, Samsung Internet at 2.3%, and Opera at 2.09%. I suspect I'm the only one using Firefox as my web browser in my small circle of friends (I switch between Chrome and Firefox every so often).
Still, figuring out the problem (I fucking hope it's figured out) made me very happy.
March 19, 2025
Peggy Moon
The Legend of Peggy Moon is back up. I was going to use a picture from one of the Fallout games to show Peggy in her power armor, but after search I found a picture of Neocron's power armor that wasn't too bad. Neocron had a very small team, it did its best and we did have fun in that world back in the day.
March 19, 2025
I'm an Idiot
Earlier this year I had a massive panic attack and ended up losing a lot of stuff from this page. It took me until today to hit the Internet Archive and do a search for alChandler's Halls. So then, some older stuff will be showing up here from time to time. I should have hit the Archive earlier but to be honest I didn't think of it until today.
I got back from my trip to New York yesterday and that means that this week will be a lump week, so don't expect to see anything new in the contents until next week at the earliest.
March 18, 2025
Careless People
Careless People is a book written by Sarah Wynn-Williams. She used to be Facebook's global public policy director and her book about her time in the company has just been released. The book's publisher didn't do the usual pre-publication publicity shtick probably because the expected that Meta would try to prevent the book from ever being released. But it is out and Meta can't do anything about that. However they got an arbiter to ban Wynn-Williams from promoting the book on the grounds that the book violates the severance agreement she signed when Facebook shitcanned her.
But the book has been released into the wild and there's nothing Meta can do about that. And I might not have heard about it except for an article in the Times about Meta's attempt to suppress it; that's normally how these things go. And that's why Careless People is next on my reading list.
March 18, 2025
Doom (2016)
Nine years ago I bought the Doom remake. I managed to make it to Hell and there I was foiled by a boss. He had an attack that required me to hit the control key to crouch and then hit the space bar to jump and I just couldn't get the timing right. Since then I'd occasionally put the game back on my system but I never made it to Hell again. But this year, I made it to Hell once more and I'm going to try to make it to that boss again and see if I can get past him. I'm not sure that I'll make it but I'm going to give it my best shot. And unlike 2016, I'll have edibles by my side to calm me down.
By the way, The original Doom came out in 1993 and if you're interested, here's a link to a pdf of the July, 1993 issue of Computer Gaming World. That issue had a preview of Doom. It really was a remarkable game for its time.
March 13, 2025
Atomfall
On 3/27/25 Atomfall drops. It's a cross between Far Cry and Stalker and the devs felt comfortable enough to release a 90 minute demo to game reviewers. It's set in England in the wake of the Windscale fire. Windscale was a nuclear power plant and in 1957 a fire there caused one of the worst nuclear accidents in history. In the game the area around the plant is quarantined and your character wakes up in the quarantine zone with no memory. Not the most original idea, I'll grant you, but reaction to the demo is pretty good.
March 10, 2025
Avowed Finale
If you're planning to play Avowed sometime then be advised there are spoilers here.
In Avowed you're an envoy from the Emperor of Aedyr, tasked with ending a plague that's slowing down his plan to annex an island continent called the Living Lands. Aside from the plague the annexation is also stymied by the fact that the place was settled by various groups trying to get away from the Aedyr Empire. So the game is, among other things, about colonialism. As the Envoy, it's your job to enforce the Emperor's will. However the Emperor is far away and you can pretty much do as you like, although not without consequences.
So then, on one hand you have the Steel Garrote who want to bring the settlers to heel. And on the other hand there are the settlers who bristle at the prospect of becoming part of the empire. On top of all that you're a godlike, a person marked in the womb by a god. Other godlikes know who thier patron is, but not you. It's not until you get to the Living Lands that your patron reveals themself, it's Sapadal a nature god who has been imprisoned for centuries by the god Woedica, the god of vengeance.
Sapadal indicates that they were attacked and their followers were slaughtered. On top of that they might be responsible for the Dream Scourge, that's the plague afflicting the Living Lands.
So then you've got Sapadal, they're the god that touched you in the womb and they're able to communicate with you in spite of being imprisoned. They want out and they swear that while they're responsible for the Dream Scourge, they can't really control it until they're free. Of course after several centuries alone Sapadal might be crazy.
On the other hand there's Lödwyn, head of the Steel Garrote. She wants to end the plague by killing Sapadal, that would make it easy for Aedyr to conquer the Living Lands. And that's the choice I had to make, free Sapadal and hope they were honest about their intentions, of kill them and allow the Steel Garrote to kill everyone who tries to resist the Empire.
With that in mind, here's the ending I got.
By the way, I was a little too harsh on the companions. Part of the reason I found them useless is that I wasn't using their special attacks. I do dumb shit like that in games from time to time.
March 8, 2025
This has been a Whenpigsfly production.
Any questions or comments can be directed to kaliban13@comcast.net.
Logo courtesy of Mrs. Silverman.