After our first week back at work (which felt like it went on for a month), it’s time for another round up of the weekends geeky times.
Friday night I ended up on Destiny. I’ve been working on levelling up my second character mainly by playing the Crucible. I started out this weekend at level 11, and I’m now at 21, so I’ve made some good progress.
What I like about playing as a low level character in the Crucible is that I feel that people will think that I’m a bit of a Christmas noob. But then I will go on to be in the top 2 of most games. I like to think that I end up surprising a few players who might groan about a lowly level 11 in the team.
After a few games in the Crucible I switched back to my Hunter, and went off to work on some of the Crota’s End raid with a friend. Basically we wanted to get some rewards from it.
We got as far as the Deathsinger, but as there were only two of us, and me not really knowing the strategies in CE we couldn’t make it past this.
But I’m perfectly fine with this. We shouldn’t be able to beat this raid with just the two of us. It should require all six players to work together and work through it all.
What you actually get is a completely broken and lacklustre raid. The first part, which should see you running from lamp to lamp through a near pitch black maze whilst trying to avoid hordes of thrall, is cheesable. The second part – I’m not even sure what is supposed to happen because it feels so broken, is, again cheesable. The third part is running along a corridor jumping over enemies. Then you are on to the Deathsinger, and then Crota himself.
It’s quite honestly a bit pathetic. This is meant to be the toughest challenge in the game. This is effectively the ‘End Game’. I’m actually pretty shocked at how short the whole raid is, and the fact that there are plenty of people that have been able to solo the whole thing is unbelievable really.
But the good thing is, is that I managed to pick up two pieces of raid armour whilst playing it, so I can now start to move on to level 31.
I ended up having most of Saturday day time free, so I ploughed on with Assassin’s Creed: Black Flag. I’m really enjoying it at the moment. The whole pirate side of the game is great fun, and I love just sailing around whilst my crew sing shanties for me.
In fact, if the whole game was just about being a pirate, I think it would be great.
One thing I do find annoying is that we are however many AC games in to the series now and we still seem to be seeing the same kinds of missions. Tail this guy, eavesdrop on this conversation. I just would’ve liked to see a little more variety by now. But that said I still really like the game.

On the subject of the tailing missions. How stupid are they! If you actually think about it. With every single one, the person you’re tailing always turns around at multiple points during the mission. Now, to me that says they are suspicious that someone is following them. Firstly, why would they be suspicious? Secondly, if you were that suspicious, would you not notice the hooded guy who seems to be in every small crowd of people standing around awkwardly every time you turn around? Ok, for some of the people it makes sense for them to be suspicious, but others are just walking to and from somewhere. It’s just a bit silly.
The only other thing I hate about AC games is the bits where you come out of the animus and have to do stupid side stuff, I HATE IT! It makes me feel like I’m playing another game, and it’s a really crap game that I don’t want to play, but for some reason I’m being forced in to it. I know it’s part of the story, but I’d much rather have it delivered to me as a cut scene. I feel like it completely removes me from the experience, and just makes me want to stop playing. I JUST WANT TO BE A PIRATE!
Earlier in the week I had some pretty awesome news, and it was that I became an uncle. So on Sunday, we went over to see my nephew. There isn’t really much to say about it, he’s tiny, and pretty cute and certainly looks like he belongs in my family – strong genes! But I just kind of wanted to share the news.

In the evening I was back to grinding out my Titan, and finally got him to level 20, and as soon as he hit it I was able to use my exotic helmet I’d been holding on to for a while. So now he is a mishmash of really low level armour and weapons, and exotic and legendary gear.
– Will
My weekend was quite the socially active one. Which in turn meant it wasn’t quite as Geeky as Wills. But have to say I’m glad Will’s picked up Assassins Creed and is enjoying it as much as I did. Can’t recommend the game enough to PS4 & XboxOne owners, and given it’s over a year old it’s reasonably cheap to pick up, so do it! Experience the pirates life first hand.
So in last week’s Geekly Review I mentioned that I’m going to try to actually complete my games this year as a resolution. Happy to report that I’m still determined and not lost the drive yet as I finished my second game of the year in Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare. Okay so it’s not the toughest of campaigns to complete and it was really short. But still it counts right? The campaign was actually pretty decent. I enjoyed it despite the predictability of Irons and Atlas. I did find each mission was pretty short though, felt alot shorter compared to some of the classics from previous COD titles. But it also had it’s fair share of fun missions too. With that out of the way I’m onto my next challenge.

Onto the next Christmas present The Last of Us Remastered. I’m pretty sure by now everyone who owns a PS3 or PS4 has played this, But as PS3 wasn’t my platform of choice last generation I didn’t experience it then. With all the positive reviews and awards I guess I had to try. So I’m halfway through so far and have to say while I am enjoying it yes, it’s not quite the mind blowing, brain melting experience I was expecting. Perhaps I’ve been to into the hype and was expecting more. That said I am only halfway point, so the best may be yet to come. It is good, and I am enjoying it, just not getting the sense of amazement that I thought I would. It’s also pretty damned difficult. I am enjoying the intensity though navigating around the environment in a stealthy fashion being conservative with my ammo.
The other game I’ve dived into is Ducktales Remastered on PS3, one of the free PSN+ Games for January. So far I’ve only put an hour into it, but enjoyed that hour. It’s not life or death in my eyes to complete this one, so my attention will definitely be focused on Last of Us.
On Sunday I ended up spending the day watching films. We’re approaching Oscar season, so I thought i’d take the time to watch some of the Oscar bait films. I manged to tackle Nightcrawler, Birdman and Big Hero 6.
Now from what I’d read and heard, Birdman is the be all and end all of films from 2014. I watched it but have to say It didn’t really grab me until way over halfway through the film. That’s not saying it’s a bad film, it’s good, watchable, but I couldn’t watch it again for a long time. Nightcrawler on the other hand was very stylish and entertaining and had my attention from the get go. It reminded me of Drive in terms of style, action and Jake Gyllenhaal’s portrayal of the anti-hero.
From then I felt I needed a pick me up after watching 2 rather dark films back to back, so headed to Disney Animations latest flick Big Hero Six. It’s based on the Marvel property of the same name and is about a young genius fascinated by robotics that creates a team to get revenge for a family tragedy. Your classic super hero origin story, that’s even quoted in the film itself. An entertaining Disney flick and another hit in terms of their latest original studio offerings, seems they’re on a roll after Tangled, Wreck it Ralph and Frozen. I would like to see more offerings from Disney studios based on properties they’ve bought from Marvel or Star Wars, are we perhaps ready for Disney Studio’s “The Ewoks”? Maybe not.
And that’s my blurb over, onto completing more games and watching more films
– Murr