Probably Biased

This book is a tough one for me to be very critical of, I love the Adeptus Custodes and the Sisters of Silence, they are all but unheard of in the exhaustive lore of the Warhammer 40,000 universe and to see these mythical organizations and figures finally get some coverage is a veritable dream come true. That said thus far I have been rather disappointing in the quality of their coverage, Master of Mankind was pretty good but was very focused on a handful of characters and very specific events and much the same was true of the Dark Imperium. While we learned more about the Custodes in both books, especially the first, I was left wishing there had been more. While it would have been nice to see more about the organization and doctrines, history and culture of these groups what was there was still considerable compared to what had come before. It is also some consolation that Forge World's Horus Heresy series did provide a nice chunk of lore on both organizations though I s...

There is one little motto that stands as the most important central pillar of my core identity and belief structures, that motto is this: to try to learn something new every day. On the face of it those eight little words are really quite simple and straightforward, yet beneath that simplicity lies a greater meaning and understanding. For to learn something new every day I must first be open to new ideas, experiences and lessons. To learn I must be receptive to new information and sometimes willing to actively seek it out. I have to step outside of my comfort zone and engage with thoughts, activities, ideas and even people and places that I might otherwise have no wish to deal with. Particularly given my own very introverted personality this openness is difficult. Often times I do not want to deal with people, certainly not strangers. I do not want to go into new places where I do not feel welcome or comfortable. Yet it is by doing exactly those things, going to new places and intera...

After driving for Uber for just a few months I recently decided to delete my account and beg my insurance company to let me switch back to the much cheaper private insurance. My experiences with the company were a good learning experience of scams to avoid in future because honestly, Uber (and likely all rideshare companies as a rule) is essentially a scam. Much like pyramid scheme companies rideshare transportation app companies exploit their employees or drivers by putting most of the costs of operation onto the employee instead of the business. Now while pyramid scheme sales companies require employees to essentially become the primary customers of the company, purchasing all of the sales products themselves before then re-selling them at a mark-up, ride-share companies require their employees, or drivers, to bear the great majority of operating costs. For a pyramid scheme company this system ensures that employees really do not make any money, so the companies promi...

As any fan of Fallout 4, or Bethesda studio in general, almost certainly already knows the Fallout 4 Creation Club launched just recently. Every account seems to have received a hundred "credits" free which can buy you a black paint scheme for your power armor or two of the three pip-boy alternate color schemes, so at the very least some new paint mods for free is not a terrible thing. That said I finally bit the bullet and spent fifteen bucks on credits, at about a penny a credit that was fifteen hundred credits. This purchase got me the Hellfire Power Armor, Prototype Gauss Rifle and Chinese Stealth Armor mods with a little left over. Now each item is obtained through a quest but can also be looked up and added to your inventory with console codes if you are playing the game on PC. It did not take long for disappointment to set in however when even the quests themselves had stock pip-boy icons and nothing even remotely original. While a small thing this sign boded ...

So a couple of weeks ago I was meandering through Barnes and Noble with little real idea of what to look at or get, I was just kind of killing time one lazy afternoon while out of state visiting family. Eventually I found myself in the Sci-Fi aisle staring at the Star Wars section now dominated by orange bars on almost all the titles saying "Legacy," which indicates that those are the old extended universe books that are no longer canon after the Disney takeover. Only a handful of titles lacked the bar and as I flipped through some I stumbled on Star Wars: Dark Disciple and on the cover were Quinlan Voss and Asajj Ventress. When the Clone Wars show was cancelled I remember a few interviews where the production team talked about some of the unfinished arcs dealing with Darth Maul and Asajj Ventress being covered in either graphic novel or novel form so I had kind of been expecting this book but I had also not been looking out for it or avidly following news. I just sort of kne...

A few days ago I stumbled on a promotion to download the game Jotun for free. Produced by Thunder Lotus Games and released in 2015 this game normally retails for about fifteen bucks. When I downloaded the game it was really only because it was free. Thunder Lotus Games only has two titles on Steam and the trailers and photos looked interesting but I did not really intend to play this game any time soon. However I found myself with some free time and nothing else to do so I fired Jotun up and checked it out. Boy was it worth it. For an inexpensive indy game Jotun is striking. The artwork, the narration and story, the level design, it all leaps out and grabs you in a way that few other games I have played have ever accomplished. Richly narrated in icelandic and translated through subtitles the story follows a viking woman named Thora as she is killed in a shipwreck and then taken to the void by the gods and given a second chance to earn her place in Valhalla, the glorious afterlife in ...

I think everyone who has ever come near a game store knows about mech dominated franchises like Armored Core and Titanfall. What is often overlooked however is that mechs are a common sight in sci-fi games even when they do not take center stage as the key technology or weapons platform of the universe. From Gears of War to Halo rocking stomping killer mechs are a common sights on the battlefields of distant futures, dystopian alternate histories and galaxies far far away. The mechs on this list are featured in game universes that do not revolve around the technology but where they are just one of a number of equal weapons technologies with no special emphasis or importance placed on them as a technology. Despite not being the poster weapon or mechanic of these series the mechs on this list nevertheless stand out as awesome and memorable components of these games.  10: Mech - Osiris New Dawn Looks cool right? Several times I have come close to buying this game just for this...