I guess I'm a professional journalist now.

The blood sweat and tears that went into my English degree has finally, finally, led to actual financial gain. All $50 dollars of it. I wrote a small piece on a local Latin cultural festival, but I'm having a hard time focusing on that.

I have my hands around an actual, honest to god, career now. It's only been a year since I graduated, I honestly thought I'd be in the service industry a hell of a lot longer than that. I feel good. I feel DAMN good. I feel "gin and tonic staring into the middle distance" good. My education actually got me somewhere... somewhere I had actually intended it to go! 

You should see the ridiculous image in my head right now. Both my journalistic idols slapping me on my shoulder, vicariously proud of my tentative step into a beleaguered but proud profession. Oh if only there were a gif that perfectly encapsualted my...


 oh wait, here we go:

Netflix is back in Black. But also Orange. Because orange is the new black is... you know what? It's not worth it.

Orange is the new Black is back for season 2, live on the web. It's all up there for your binging pleasure. I'm not going too much into detail if you're not in the mood this week. But let me say that if you were looking for the immediate fallout between Piper and Warden Healy... you're gonna be disappointed. 

It really feels like we've jumped straight to season 3. And would you believe I mean that as a compliment?

Dark Souls 2 DLC on the way!

I really, really, liked Dark Souls 2. But not as much as the first, either because I could see it's nastiest tricks coming most of the time, or the setting wasn't as inspired. I don't know, I should probably write a review...

Anyway, let's gab about The Lost Crowns! A three part dlc epic ($9.99 a piece or $24.99 for the season pass) expected to drop on July 22, August 26, and then September 24. Isn't that nice of them? TellTale never gives specific release dates...

Here's a link to the video, IGN and blog spot aren't getting along so I can't embed it here. But I can give you From software's deetful press release.

Some mighty fine deets right there. I mean, don't you wanna know what makes an ability... esoteric?

Anthony Bourdaine digs Hannibal

I'm a huge fan of the nerdist network, and today they dropped one of the best interviews in a long while. Not that there's been a quality dip, I just liked this one personally quite a bit. For one; Matt and Jonah sat in, that's always a plus, but I also got to check in on Bourdaine. I hadn't heard from him since his Girl on Guy episode about two years ago.

It's a damn good interview and worth listening to all the way, but the best part for me was hearing him rattle off his viewing habits near the end. Yep, I love Justified's second season too. Yeah, Fargo is pretty damn good. Hannibal?! He watches Hannibal?! Thank god, if anyone would appreciate the food photography (literally one of the hardest things in the world to photograph well) It'd be him. And he just... gets it. Everything the show does well does not go unnoticed by him. It's rare to have an accomplished chef/journalist/author/cinefile in general. I'm just happy he didn't pass on it.

Anywho, check it out. He's a fiercely interesting guy.

...his sexist joke about foie gras that my sister won't stop reminding me about, notwithstanding.

So twitter changed yesterday...

Now I gotta find a whole new banner and my background's gone.

Damnit.

The Watchdogs Launch Day Spectacular!

"Citra? No... no, Clara"

Watchdogs is out just in time for my 3 day weekend that happened to start yesterday. Launch quibbles aside, i.e. not being able to ping my activation code for 4 hours, everything runs decently. But only just so. I didn't invest in a high end PC (GTX 780 SC and a I5 3570k) to run at 30 frames per second. And WD veers wildly in the fps ditch whenever I hop into a car. Everything else is smooth as silk though, and it's a damn sight better than AC Black Flag. The thing makes my rig grind and whir like nothing I've ever heard, but if I'm being honest, it only looks slightly better than Sleeping Dogs and runs about 30% worse. There's clearly some next gen voodoo going on in there somewhere, but I don't see it on the screen.

As for the game itself... I like it. It's a very close cousin to AC but manages to do it's own thing. The protagonist is a raspy cipher, but I can handle that. Your sociopath fixer buddy has more than enough personality for the both of you. The main missions are fun, and the script is better than I thought. When meeting a hacker femme fetale (I know, I know, but just go with it) for the first time, she rolls her eyes at you saying "you're exactly what I expected." It's nice to see AAA video game writers hang a lampshade on their bore of a leading man. If nothing else, it's good to know that they know.It's not like they wrote a racist character arc for him, realized their mistake too late in the game to change anything about it, then had the gall to call it "satire."

Watchdogs is worth it. It's not the half assed insult that GTA IV was (performance wise) and it's original enough for me to recommend financially encouraging it. For all it's familiar choices I can say it's stands on it's own. But can you imagine what would happen if this fails? Can you imagine how much more homogenized AAA development could get? I'm not saying this game is a $60 ballot in the new IP electoral process, but don't pretend powers-that-be aren't paying close attention.

Josh Sawyer Speaks!

It's gonna to be an agonizingly long time before we hear anything else about the next Fallout game. We have Bethesda's torturously mediocre MMO to thank for that. But in the mean time, the New Vegas director sat down with Eurogamer for a chat. The timing seems perfect seeing as I've recently fallen in love with the Mojave Wasteland all over again.

Hit the link y'all!