Daily Dose of Big-Cable Bullshit: Cable-backed Bill Restricting Municipal Broadband to Become Law
The town of Wilson, North Carolina grew collectively fed up with the poor quality and high cost of broadband offered by commercial ISPs, so they did the sensible thing: They made their own, called Greenlight--a fiber-to-home network for internet, video, and phone service that's faster and cheaper than that offered by the big cable companies.
Now, do Time Warner Cable and Embarq take this as indication that maybe, just maybe, they ought to improve their service and make their prices more affordable? No, of course not, don't be ridiculous. They send in their lobbyists, pushing hard and greasing politician palms to pass a bill that would effectively crush this effort, and any others like it in the state of North Carolina.
Disgusting.
Second Impressions: The Witcher 2
Yeah, I know, second impression? I haven't finished the game yet, so a review isn't in the cards yet. But I'm trying to get back into the swing of regular writing, and the game experience does change somewhat significantly between the prologue and chapter one.
The first noticeable difference is combat. It gets easier, by a lot, because one can finally unlock the abilities that allow Geralt to not suck horribly at fighting more than one opponent. However, even those abilities don't make combat much more satisfying. I'm rather disappointed by this; the nostalgia goggles may be tinting my memory somewhat, but I do remember beating stuff up being visceral and enjoyable in the original game. TW2 combat is a lot less responsive, less visceral.
The next addition of dubious value: QTEs. Quick Time Events. I'm really not sure what they were thinking, particularly by putting in the worst offender: The "Press X to Not Die" variety of QTE. Granted, these last type can be turned off, but they're on by default. The fist-fighting minigame is another QTE, though at least restricted to the WASD keys. The variety of moves performed is quite limited, so that gets old very quickly.
Another annoyance is maps that are crude at best and downright wrong at times, leading to frustrated wandering when attempting to reach a quest objective marker. That is, when the objective marker isn't missing completely; I've run into that problem more than once. Then there are the "Come back in the evening/morning/rapture" types, which neglect to give an exact time, leading one to wait around for long, boring minutes.
What hasn't changed is a narrative that's still engaging, and a world that's friggin' gorgeous. New tech doesn't necessarily lead to more believable, aesthetically pleasing worlds, but in this case it absolutely has. My one niggle (I'm picky, so sue me) is the abrupt shifts in gradient overlays. If these were more gradual, shifts between areas would be more subtle and less jarring. But this is a minor complaint, in one of the few games where I'll occasionally just stop to admire the scenery.