ChrisBardon

So I started the big ass House of X/Powers of X HC the other day, and I think it's really a case of "you can't go home again". I know a lot more than I should about X-Men continuity, and even I was getting lost with "how the hell is Xavier even alive now" and "why is he walking around in an evil Reed Richards helmet" and "wait, the island from Giant Size #1 is the new Genosha, and can create portals now"? It's classic Hickman, which is dense, and chapter 3 actually got me back on board with it (the whole Moira McTaggert issue), but so far I don't think this is going to pull me back into being a regular X-Men reader. One of those things where, as soon as you stop reading, getting back in is reasonably impenetrable, and you question why you would in the first place.

So basically, if you go in cold-ish, you won't understand everything, but if you play everything else, you still won't understand what's going on. Sounds like a real winner there...maybe I'll just skip it?

Nice additions-I'll probably check out Kingdom Hearts 3, although I never played 2 or any of the spinoffs, so perhaps it'll make sense? I also noticed that there was a package with the older games on Xbox now, although not included with gamepass.

12? I suppose there are 7 launches, each of which should also be able to brake, plus one extra in the second drop segment, plus a few in load/unload? It is a really long track, but I suppose you could count the number of sections with viable escape platforms. When it's moving, it's almost constantly loading/unloading. The nighttime lights on the castle didn't have any drones, and were pretty minimal. I think they're blocked by the local residents from doing anything too elaborate, since there are houses almost directly across the street from the park. Some projection mapping stuff with the different house colours etc, but nothing to write home about. The Star Wars fireworks at DHS were better, but even those weren't great compared to the ones they've done at the Magic Kingdom.

Back home, and definitely glad we went last week instead of this week. I think this is the start of Spring Break season, since Saturday at Universal was much busier than earlier in the week. We made it on Hagrid one last time, and hit a minor breakdown near the end before the final launch. We were stuck for maybe 45 seconds, but they offered us a re-ride immediately afterwards, so we did two laps on it. That's also where I realized that the track splits in the show building, and I actually have no idea how many trains they have going at once, but it's a really cool system. They're completely outclassed on the animatronics here though. The Hagrid one just looks sad... I suppose you're blowing by pretty quickly, but even then you can tell that the face doesn't really move. After seeing Hondo on the Falcon ride, it's night and day.

Yeah, we've been really fortunate on the Universal side of things. Going to go back tomorrow for our last day before late flight home, and definitely want to try to hit Hagrid one last time. Probably the best "narrative" coaster I've ever been on, and some real unexpected things on it. Guardians of the Galaxy has a lot to live up to. A couple of other things that I noticed about Universal vs Disney this week were that any of the "events" that happened were much easier to get at for Universal. For example, the light show at Hogwarts was something we kind of stumbled into, and basically grabbed a spot for 5 mins before they started. Same with the Mardi Gras parade at Studios-10 mins before we walked out of Minion Mayhem, saw it was starting up, and grabbed a seat to watch it. By contrast, if you want to get a spot for fireworks or a parade at Disney, you need to stake it out at least 40 mins in advance... Smuggler's run was basically a beefed up Star Tours, which is fine, and I got more of the ride the second time when I wasn't concentrating on piloting (which is pretty cool). Might have been nice if they didn't split up U/D and L/R on the pilots (and give one person the option of flying the whole thing), but I can see why there's the consolation that there is. As for ROTR, I've heard feedback both ways on it, and really just wanted to see it for myself. I'd held off on any POV videos or anything because I knew I'd have this chance coming up, but now I'll probably just check out a couple of those to see what we missed. It also looks like yesterday was the worst operating day in a couple weeks for the ride, so luck of the draw I guess? Had it been a multi-day trip, then that would have been fine. We probably would have started every day at DHS this way, and then gone elsewhere for a while until we made it on, but missing out on a single day just sucks.

Trip to Florida so far has been pretty good. We did 4 days at Universal, and it was pretty empty for most of them. Studios and IOA were both probably 20 minute waits at the most, with Hagrid being an hour both times we've done it. My daughter got picked for a wand at Olivander's, and she was vibrating with excitement afterwards when we were waiting to pay for the $60 wand (plus $30 for a display stand of course). I don't really begrudge it though, since it'll be something she has as a keepsake for a long time. Also did Volcano Bay for the first time, and I think it's probably better than Typhoon Lagoon from what I remember of it. The virtual queues work well, although most things were "ride now" all day, the Krakatau "aqua coaster" is seriously cool, and the water is heated much warmer than you'd expect. The only complaint there is that "you can't get there from here" a lot of the time, navigating the park is a bit of a pain, and the TapuTapu devices, while cool, could REALLY use a clock function, since it was hard to keep track of the time without a dedicated watch or phone. Still worth checking out though. Today was DHS though, since we'd decided to try to do a day there to check out Star Wars. I've been reading up on it for weeks, trying to plot out a plan of attack, and I thought I did everything right. Got everyone up and out of the hotel at 6:30, and made it into the lot, and through the gates by 7:15 for an 8 am opening. 8 rolls around, and I'm refreshing the app like crazy, and the "join group" button is still disabled while I'm hearing cheers from others around me. Finally got into a group at 8:00:45 or so, and...group 92. The person sitting at the same table as I was (who happened to be a cast member there with her kids) got a group at exactly the same time, and got 51 instead. Up to 70 were guaranteed, and that's all they made it through today. For the past 15 days, they're made it well over 100 most of them, but not today I suppose... That's at least $500 in tickets, a whole lot of stress, and no ROTR. Talked to a couple of "guest experience" people there, and their response was basically "sorry, you're SOL" . So much for Disney going the extra mile to make guests happy? It's strange having watched the Imagineering Story that mentioned Disneyland staying open for 24h straight when Star Tours first opened to get people through...today's Disney Parks are a far cry from that.... We did manage to do the Falcon twice though (which was cool), and wander through some of the shops (which were super crowded). I was also a little pissed off that the capacity for Savi's workshop was so pitiful, and that you couldn't get in without having made a reservation so far in advance. Having just come over from Universal, where you can just line up for Olivander's and get in, it's a little jarring. Disney has now turned from something you can do spontaneously to something you have to plan out by the minute 6 months out... Maybe I'm just a little biter right now about having dropped a bunch of cash on a DHS day and not having been able to do 2 of the 3 things I wanted to there (ROTR and Savi), but I'm really not impressed with the way today went...

I've been able to get through most of the songs on Hard, but only a couple on Expert. Hitting a wall like that has made going back to Beat Saber a little less interesting, but I've still been trying to get better. Most of the custom songs are only charted at Expert/+, which makes the prospect of hundreds of new songs a little less attractive.

Thanks for the report. I've been watching data at https://www.thrill-data.com/waits/attraction/hollywood-studios/starwarsriseoftheresistance/ over the last few days trying to get an idea of what to expect. It looks like yesterday was a bad day (less than 60 groups), and when I've opened the app a couple of mornings at 8, it looks like the main groups have gone VERY quickly. Need to try to clean out the extra linked accounts from my app, but for some reason it's not letting me delete people that don't have valid tickets.

So I think we've decided to give DHS a try next week. It looks like the park opens at 8 every day, so I think if we're on the road by 6:45-7, we should be able to make the 11 minute drive and get into the park before 8 (although looking online, maybe planning on a 6:30 departure would be better). From all indications, backup groups have been making it in, and they're being really conservative with the number that they allocate first thing. Test this morning showed that I could have gotten a regular group until 8:02, and as of 8:25 could still get into a backup group. The backups seem to be "as long as the ride doesn't break down, we'll get you in", so hopefully things have started to stabilize? Fuck $120/day tickets though...

So this might be an esoteric use case, but last night I figured out how to get SolidWorks models to work in VR on the quest. Using the SimLabSoft viewer/composer, you can import a sldasm file into a VR scene, export as a .vrpackage, and then view using the simlab viewer on the quest. We've been working on some renovations for the house, and my wife is a Mechanical Engineer, so she both has access to, and is really good at, making stuff in SolidWorks. This means that for a major room reno, she'll model the whole thing in there, which gives us a chance to experiment with layouts/dimensions really easily. Being able to throw it into VR just makes it that much cooler, although I do need to check and make sure the scale is actually correct, since everything seemed about 10% smaller than it should have...

Neat to see this happening, but April delivery? That's...aggressive. They say that the game is basically done, so I suppose this is to gauge interest/platforms? Think I'll hold off for release and see what happens.

It helps to have a system where people are somewhat incentivized to buy multiple units. I know someone who has four switches in the house, and while I think that's on outlier, the number of households that have at least two is probably not insignificant. Would be interesting to see how that breaks down. I know that by the end of the 3ds, we'd bought at least 4 of them, between upgraded versions, and getting them for the kids.

I thought the same thing. I think I was confusing it with that other multiplayer Fable thing that they abandoned. That reminds me that I never did play Fable anniversary, or finish fable 3. Wonder how those hold up? I think they're all on gamepass-maybe they'll go on the backlog.

So this is on game pass, and I always meant to check it out, and I've been enjoying it so far. Talion is definitely a boring character, but Celebrimor is a little better, but when I got to the point where I could start recruiting orcs, the first one I converted is, so far, the best character in the game. I've been going through the new area that I'm in trying to recruit the whole board of orcs before taking on the main siege mission (or at least take out the warchiefs). It at least seems like there's a few different things you can do with the nemesis system now, although there's a really annoying issue where you can target your followers with attacks far too easily. I had a bodyguard turn on me because I attacked him too much, although I did like that the game took that into account when I finally killed him And yes, there is a fair amount of open world bullshit in the game (artifacts, towers, etc), but if nothing else it's all fast? You can really move quickly in the game, everything is a "tap to pick up", and nothing is very far from anything else. I also like some of the commentary from Celebrimor on some of the artifacts you find. Anyway, worth a look if you have gamepass I suppose? It looks like none of the DLC is included, but it still has the Batman combat, which is still fun. I'll keep going on it until I get bored.